Sales onboarding encapsulates the entire process of welcoming and connecting new hires on a sales team. This starts as soon as a seller walks into the office or logs on for the first time.

The sales onboarding process, however, is more complex than a simple “hello” and introducing new hires to their teammates. Sales onboarding is multifaceted and includes a number of tasks and items that get new sellers up-to-speed and hitting performance goals as soon as reasonably possible. An effective sales onboarding programme includes:

• Industry knowledge: Popular acronyms, selling tactics and trends may be old news to you, but they’re brand new information to a new sales rep.
• Company and product training: Your sales reps have selling skills, but they aren’t yet familiar with the products and services your organisation sells. Training new hires on these aspects of your business is especially important if your company belongs to a unique or niche market.
• Sales enablement content strategy: Knowing what content assets like pitch decks, sales sheets and case studies are at their disposal is critical to a new seller’s success. This also ensures they understand the best time to deliver different assets throughout the buyer journey.
• Sales processes and best practices: A comprehensive understanding of what has or hasn’t worked in the past can save a new seller time and energy.
• Skills training: Every seller has unique strengths and weaknesses. Great onboarding gauges each seller’s current skill set and delivers personalised sales training that helps strengthen their weaknesses.

Why is sales onboarding an important part of enablement?

Selling is more challenging than ever before. Deal cycles are increasingly complex and often driven by highly-informed buyers through digital channels. As a result, sellers now have to develop new skills and enable them to engage buyers in a new sales landscape. In order to quickly ramp up new sales reps, your organisation needs to ensure they have the right skills, knowledge and tools to engage buyers on their terms. In order to do these things effectively, companies need to create an onboarding programme that acts as a roadmap for new hires.

A successful sales onboarding plan educates sellers on their sales quotas, performance milestones and expectations, and the tools that will get them there. The sales onboarding process is an essential step in this plan. If you don’t take time to train, educate and guide sellers from the get-go, they’ll fail to properly understand what the organisation intends for them to achieve and what resources they have to help get the job done.

The benefits of sales onboarding

Sales onboarding goes far beyond providing a few playbooks and training sessions to new sellers. A strong sales enablement onboarding programme paired with collaborative company culture pays off tenfold when your seller starts connecting with prospects. In fact, effective sales onboarding has been shown to:

Increase Productivity	Drive Satisfaction	Decrease Turnover
New sellers who have access to an effective onboarding programme ramp up seven weeks faster than the industry average (6-9 months).	Employees who say they experienced exceptional onboarding are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace.	Nearly 70% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for an average of three years if they experience great onboarding.

Let’s take a close look at how these benefits come to be.

• Improve productivity: When a seller spends less time asking questions or digging for important resources, they can reach their full potential with ease.
• Drive satisfaction: An onboarding programme is a new hire’s first experience with your organisation’s learning and development culture, which is an important factor in employee satisfaction. Therefore, a hassle-free onboarding experience is often reflective of a larger, positive company culture.
• Decrease turnover: Lower turnover rates are all about confidence in your brand and your company. An organisation with a solid onboarding process may make new hires feel more secure in their position and the company as a whole.

Challenges to delivering effective onboarding

Although an effective onboarding programme is critical to seller experience, some organisations still struggle to hit the mark. In fact, 88% of leaders believe that their organisation struggles with onboarding. Some of the most common obstacles to delivering a solid onboarding programme include:

1. Access to the right sales enablement materials: Sellers need easy and ongoing access to their training and sales enablement materials. Make sure new hires know where the most pertinent information is stored, as well as additional resources that may come in handy.
2. Lack of milestones to gauge progress: Despite the well-known benefits of goal-making, 60% of companies don’t set short-term goals for new hires. Giving performance reviews – even small ones – can reassure sellers that they are on the right track
3. Compressed time frame: The first few months in a new role can be stressful for a new hire. Sales training plans should allow adequate time for your seller to learn the ropes instead of cramming onboarding into a few weeks. The fact is, employees who experience longer onboarding programmes gain full proficiency 34% faster than those with shorter programmes, so create a roadmap that extends beyond a seller’s first 30 or 60 days on the job.
4. Inconsistent experience from rep to rep: Sometimes, even the best sales onboarding plans can have flaws. These can boil down to simple things like different methods of delivery by trainers and enablement leaders, or the time of year when a hire is brought on board.
5. Inadequate coaching and feedback: As a sales enablement manager or leader, it’s up to you to ensure that each of your sellers receives the support they need wherever they are in their skills journey. What applies to one seller may not apply to the rest. Utilise the resources at your disposal to give feedback where it will be most effective.

Accelerating Seller Success

Explore the guide

Sales onboarding best practices

While companies can face a number of challenges with onboarding new sales reps, there are many great tips to help the process run smoothly.

1. Streamline the process: Keep your training materials sorted, indexed and easy to find. The faster a new hire can get a question answered, the better.
2. Assess and measure sales readiness over time: As discussed, goal-setting is one of the strongest facets of a great training plan. Give your new hires small goals to achieve, so the bigger ones don’t seem quite so daunting.
3. Deliver engaging training: Binders full of reading material don’t make for a great new hire sales training experience. Instead, encourage employees to interact with content, apply newly learned knowledge and problem solve in practice exercises.
4. Encourage relationship building: Mentoring and shadowing are some of the oldest tricks in the book, and for good reason! Letting your new employees learn from more experienced sales reps grants access to hard-earned wisdom and builds the foundation of a strong professional connection.
5. Provide coaching: Your sellers are only as good as the support they receive. Offering coaching and ongoing training can push your sales numbers higher than ever.

Why you should consider using a sales enablement platform for onboarding

Despite the benefits, many organisations still don’t have a formal onboarding programme. The most common reason is a lack of time. With an economy moving at a pace unheard of just a decade ago, it’s hard to carve out time to bring every new hire up to speed.

What are sales enablement tools?

In order to overcome this obstacle, more companies are implementing an onboarding tool or sales enablement platform. These tools make it easier to turn important knowledge into lessons, assignments and assessments that new hires can complete over time. It also streamlines the onboarding process by automating tasks so that leaders don’t have to manually push out training content when a new seller is ready. This type of system has actually been shown to boost retention rate by as much as 16%.

If you’ve started a new job in the last few years, you might recall that a lot of the information you were given was irrelevant to your role or simply too much to remember. You’re not alone in this feeling. In fact, almost 80% of sales training is forgotten by most reps within the first few months on the job. So, how can an organisation make training stick?

This is one of the many perks of investing in sales onboarding software. A one-stop digital location for your company’s policies, procedures and materials makes for easy onboarding and happier employees. A dedicated sales onboarding tool also tracks the progress your new sellers make during their onboarding journey with assessments and feedback assessments.

Ramp up new hires faster with Seismic

When you’re ready to upgrade your sales onboarding process, turn to Seismic. Customers like Lower ramp up new sales reps 5x faster by creating onboarding at scale with Seismic’s learning and coaching software. Interested in learning more? Get a demo to find out how your organisation can improve speed to competency and reach goals more quickly with Seismic.

The post The guide to sales onboarding and new hire enablement appeared first on Seismic.

Sales coaching builds on the training your sales reps already have and focuses on refining specific skills and improving gaps in performance. Coaching also provides a space to reinforce or highlight positive behaviours and skills. It should be iterative and personalised so every rep is best supported to effectively reach their personal sales goals while contributing to the performance of their entire team.

The difference between sales training and coaching

If your company already has a successful sales training programme, you may wonder how sales coaching is any different. The reality is that coaching and training are not identical methods of training. Instead, they are connected processes that build off of one another. 

For example, sales training topics are usually centred around teaching your sellers about your products and what marketing techniques have been most successful in the past. This is a helpful collection of basic knowledge, but information that worked previously may become outdated or obsolete rather quickly. 

Coaching adds another layer to the foundational knowledge provided in training. Unlike other sales training methods that deliver concise knowledge to an entire group or team, coaching is individually tailored to each seller. It’s a lot like making a tray of cupcakes. If training is the batter – uniform and fundamentally necessary – then coaching is the toppings, endlessly varied and uniquely delicious.

Examples of sales coaching

Sales coaching can look different to each seller, depending on the individual and the experience and knowledge they may already have. In truth, the sky’s the limit when it comes to figuring out what approach works best for your sellers’ sales coaching. Best practices can include:

• Evaluating a seller’s pitch delivery for positive attributes, as well as areas of improvement.
• Assessing a rep’s email communication with a prospective customer and locating points of improvement throughout the buyer’s experience.
• Debriefing with a seller after a prospect meeting to discuss what worked and what didn’t.

Ultimately, there is no one way to coach a seller. Your prospects and customers come with their own unique challenges, and coaching can prepare your reps to address them.

What does a sales coach do?

A sales coach is not simply another trainer or built-in professional mentor for your entire sales team. The job of a sales coach is to build relationships with sellers in order to improve their performance over time. After all, it is simpler to understand where a rep’s success comes naturally, and where it doesn’t when you understand a bit more about who they are as individuals.

The ongoing education and support provided by a coach can help reps improve in whatever areas they may need without the added pressure of direct comparison to their coworkers. Instead, coaches use unique and personalised sales coaching questions to foster a relationship that’s built on trust and empathy with sellers. As sales coaches create a safe and collaborative environment for performance enhancement, their coaching will vary between sellers. Because no two sales reps are the same, individual sales coaching is a necessary tool for growth and development.

Benefits of sales coaching

A reluctant sales manager may be wondering, “Why is sales coaching important?” To comprehensively answer this question, it’s crucial to note that coaching can do more than offer a supportive ear to your sellers. The benefits of coaching can bring about potential wins for the entire business, including:

• Improved productivity: Coaching can cover various topics that extend beyond the skills that are needed to interact with prospects. Proper sales coaching often leads to more efficient work, especially if a rep’s coaching focuses on process improvement.  

• Increased engagement: A one-on-one conversation is more inviting than reading an email or completing another training lesson. A coach can act as a meaningful connection to your sales team, one that can help make everyone feel both helpful and encouraged.

• Decreased turnover: It’s no great secret that employees who feel heard and supported are more likely to stay at their current job. Sales coaching statistics support this idea with studies showing that retention increases by more than 20% in companies with coaching programmes.

• Better performance: A good coach can see where a rep already succeeds and where some performance assistance is needed. Coaching can quickly highlight a seller’s blindspots and assist them in improving in those areas.
  
• Revenue growth: Your sellers’ bottom line is your bottom line, and that’s where a coach can help. Businesses that invest resources into continuously improving their sellers reap the benefits. In 2018, companies that employed effective sales coaching saw annual revenue growth of 16.7%.

Common coaching techniques

Sales coaching is as widely varied as the companies that utilise it. That’s why it’s important to understand the many options available to you as you start incorporating a sales coaching programme into your team’s ongoing training. 

In the end, only you will know which sales coaching models are most helpful for you and your reps. Trial and error can be frustrating and time-consuming, so it can be helpful to explore what has worked for others. Some of the most common and effective sales coaching techniques are: 

• Sales performance coaching: You hired your reps for a reason, but no professional is beyond improvement. Performance coaching is a formal space that invites reps and supervisors to sit down and review what areas a rep excels in, as well as where they can improve. 

• Sales skills coaching: Overall goal-setting and improvement is great, but meeting specific prospect needs is better. Sales skills coaching gets into the nitty-gritty of buyer-rep interactions and focuses on in-the-moment improvements. 

• 1:1 coaching: This type of sales coaching incorporates consistent, uplifting conversations with each of your reps. Individual sales coaching offers a space for sellers to voice their concerns and receive tailored feedback that takes into account their own apprehensions and ideas. 

Tips for effective coaching

Once you have a game plan and have prepared your team for a new coaching process, it’s time to put everything into action. For some leaders, this can be the most daunting part, as the addition of a sales coaching programme may come with bumps and growing pains. For the smoothest transition possible we recommend:

• Mixing up coaching styles: We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – no two sales reps will respond to the same coaching style the same way. Trying a variety of approaches will allow you to find what style works best for each rep.

• Using data: If you are unsure how effective an approach is, check your numbers. Have your reps improved or not? If progress is stagnant, it may be best to try another method. 

• Defining goals and objectives: Not only are goals helpful for reps looking to measure progress, but clear objectives have also been shown to help employees feel more engaged during the coaching process. This gives them a clear plan and path that they need to work toward. 

• Scheduling check-ins: A set time each week, month or quarter to chat with your reps one-on-one can provide insight into the strategies that are working best. It’s also a great way to continue building the relationship and improving performance over time.
• Providing helpful resources: Sometimes, the most effective sales coaching won’t come from you! Give your reps access to outside training materials and education that they can access outside of coaching sessions. 

While finding the right sales coaching techniques for your sellers will take time, it will be worthwhile in the long run.

When to consider using sales coaching software

It’s not just managers and executives who want the benefits of sales coaching. Your reps do, too! More than 75% of sales employees say they want to experience the performance and work culture benefits of coaching. However, despite the benefits and preferences of employees, most managers only spend about 5% of their time coaching.

It makes sense. Managing a sales team is a demanding job, and it can be hard to carve out time to provide coaching. Not only that, but many managers may not have access to the tools and resources necessary for delivering truly engaging feedback.

In this case, sales coaching software comes to the rescue. This type of software includes features that assess employee performance, supply coaching plans and offer training in areas that need improvement. Online sales coaching provides flexibility and ease of access to your team’s ongoing training efforts without cutting corners on the quality or customisation of the feedback.

Deliver personalised coaching with Seismic

Your sales team is ready to push off from standardised training and surface-level feedback. Let Seismic help you take the next step. Seismic’s coaching solution offers the online training, practice and individualised coaching needed to take your team to the next level. Schedule a demo today to find out how you can decrease ramp time, improve performance and help sellers grow.

The post How to deliver effective sales coaching appeared first on Seismic.

Today’s eLearning tools include authoring software that enables fast and efficient creation of content. The best programmes allow anyone with technological familiarity to create rich, valuable content that learners can absorb from anyone. That’s why it is crucial for companies to leverage this newfound ability to teach employees from anywhere.

Modern learning

We are living boldly in the age of modern technology where 85% of Americans own smartphones or tablets. Today’s learners now expect a wide range of options when it comes to learning content for training and education purposes. Gone are the days of making the commute to attend long and typically boring employee training classes onsite. It is an inconvenience for employees and an added expense that is simply not necessary for the employer.

Savvy companies are turning to learning software to create eLearning experiences for online training that are not only user-friendly for both the learner and the trainer, but also offer engaging and interactive learning content they will enjoy. Modern learning opportunities that include cloud-based learning software with an easily navigable user interface makes creating eLearning materials easy, affordable, and the perfect solution to take your organisation to the next level of technology.

With eLearning software, learners get the advantage of modern learning online and while keeping the on-demand “work-from-anywhere” perks they crave. Being able to access the online training lessons on demand allows them the freedom they desire to work anytime, from anywhere, so they can work on their schedule, which enables them to excel. In addition, it lets employees know they are part of a progressive company who stays on top of technology and cares about and listens to their team members. The cloud-based online training will also better prepare employees for their roles in the organisation which leads to better job satisfaction and enjoyment.

Companies who use modern learning software to create eLearning opportunities for employees will see success in the form of a team that learns, practises, and grows. In addition, using this modern cloud-based learning opportunity will allow organisations to experience faster onboarding, higher NPS scores, more closed deals, and superior customer experience.

Types of eLearning

Company-wide training is evolving and a simple PowerPoint presentation no longer suffices. Instead, businesses are turning to eLearning software to create captivating content for their employees. More companies are recognising the advantages of eLearning software, and the industry is experiencing rapid growth. That’s why we’d like to provide a few strategies to support eLearning software for businesses.

Every eLearning situation requires a different set of content authoring tools and requirements. We’ve boiled down eLearning software into three types to simplify creating content.

1. Text-driven E-Learning software: At this level, companies only use a few content authoring tools, and the content is relatively straightforward. For the most part, the authoring software is basic and content includes text, graphics, a little audio, and a small set of questions. Training information that doesn’t delve too deep, such as compliance training, is perfect for this format. The goal or purpose of text-driven eLearning software to simply present and grasp the content as quickly as possible.
2. Interactive eLearning software: Every type of eLearning training has some overlap. Interactive eLearning software is similar to text-driven, except for a few key differences. The level of authoring software needed is a bit more complicated, takes a bit more time to get accustomed to, and content is more dynamic. For example, consider a graph or chart that users can interact and change the displayed content. The key to this format of eLearning software is that it’s interactive. In addition to text, graphics, and audio, interactive eLearning software has charts, graphs, diagrams, and videos.
3. Simulation eLearning software. This type of eLearning software is the most complex as it relies significantly on graphics, video, audio, even handles multimedia authoring using Macromedia flash. There are often custom elements and aspects created by specific content authoring tools. The authoring software needed includes tools to develop 3D components, graphics, texts, audio, video, and much more. The heart of simulation E-Learning software is to offer custom elements that aid in the learning experience by creating a more personalised journey.

Finding the right authoring software can be complex but the right eLearning software will help companies simplify the training process and save time, financial resources, and mental effort.

Rapid eLearning best practices

Here are a few strategies to consider when it comes to creating effective and engaging eLearning:

The flipped-classroom approach: We suggest taking the material you use to train and assigning it prior to work hours. Whether it’s before a first day or new quarter, the material can be learnt then immediately exemplified by the learner.

Bite-size lessons: Shorter lessons and more frequent quizzing make for higher retention. Lessons should be under 15 minutes and questions should be sprinkled throughout

Content switch-up: We’re big fans of changing up the type of content within course creation software. Look for ways to provide training content via text, images, video, and more.

Ongoing training:Training doesn’t end after onboarding. Even seasoned vets need to learn new things. Ongoing training is important for everyone in the company so that everyone remains on the same page. eLearning software helps prevent messages from being mixed up and serves as a constant source for learning.

Finding the right eLearning software

eLearning software is an investment, and companies want to ensure they make the best one possible. Since the needs of a company can vary dramatically, it’s important to create a clear vision of what a company wants to accomplish with eLearning software. As the company evolves, it’s also natural for training resources to change, especially when it comes to eLearning software. A rapidly changing company may need more advanced types of eLearning tools, such as an adapt authoring tool, a set of SCORM authoring tools, or a basic learning management system. Whatever the company needs, it’s crucial to ask the right questions, so we’ve compiled a list to help with the search of new eLearning software, content authoring tools, or authoring software.

• What’s our vision for eLearning software and what do we hope to achieve?
• What specific tools does the company need to obtain this vision, such as content authoring tools, authoring software, or a learning management system?
• How can the company be sure they’re buying the right eLearning software or content authoring tools?

The eLearning software comparison

When you’re looking for eLearning software, you are probably aiming for the right balance between a reasonable price, user-friendliness, flexibility, and range of options. However, with the number of options on the marketplace, it’s sometimes impossible to tell where to start. Should you prioritise the cost-effectiveness or efficiency of learning outcomes? What do you need your programme to do? Who are you teaching?

These are tough questions and not always easy to answer. The best way to make an eLearning software comparison is to start by reading eLearning software reviews. If you compare file software and discover that one looks better than another, that’s great, but don’t give up there. Let’s take a look at some eLearning software options available to you:

eLearning authoring tools and features

The best eLearning authoring tools can be found for purchase individually, but a system with all the tools and the eLearning authoring software necessary proves time and time again to simplify the learning involved with onboarding and ongoing training. Look for eLearning development tools that support:

• Text formatting: Lessons with hyperlinks, bolded texts, and even underlined sections are easily to read and understand.
• Images: Learning material with images are more engaging.
• Video: If you’ve taken the time to put together really great how-to videos or have timeless videos that have worked well in past training, you can position those within a lesson.
• Embed: People have media all over different platforms these days. Look for a tool that allows you to embed other content from YouTube, SlideShare, Prezi, and more.
• Doc: Sometimes you’ll need to upload supplemental forms, guides, or resources, so look for a tool that supports .doc, .xlsx, .csv, and .pdf files.

Open source eLearning Software

Open source is significant these days. Many people find the idea of open source software very appealing, because it not only is free, it has the backing of hundreds and sometimes thousands of different designers. In instructional design, the contribution of many different minds often results in a great product, but just as with free eLearning software, there are some significant downsides as well.

In an open source eLearning software comparison, you not only have to think through an open source LMS comparison, but you’ve also got to make sure that you’re getting the best product possible. The thing about open source learning management systems is that they often incorporate the most cutting edge software, which isn’t always that user-friendly. “Cutting edge” might sound good, but sometimes this moniker translates to messy, barely-beyond-beta systems that make sense only to the people who designed them and not to the people trying to use them.

The other thing about open source LMS software to keep in mind before jumping in is that it usually doesn’t offer much support doesn’t supply compatible hardware and doesn’t come with warranties. While open source eLearning tools may add a valuable layer to your eLearning programme, open source is not always the best way to go.

Free eLearning software

To leverage the explosive growth of eLearning and mobile learning in the past few years, many companies have jumped into the game for free. They provide free eLearning authoring software, allowing anyone to create and disseminate eLearning programmes to their employees or the masses. Although free eLearning software has some definite upsides, there are plenty of downsides as well. Let’s consider a few of each.

Among the benefits of free learning management system software is the fact that any company can create and put out training materials to help better its systems and its employees’ knowledge base. Considering that in past creating eLearning materials has been cumbersome and expensive, this is no small thing.

However, the downsides include unreliable origins of such materials, the sometimes-poor nature of the design, and the unvetted safety of importing them onto company systems, where they can bring malware and viruses along for the ride.

Make the switch to eLearning software

Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly by Seismic is an online training software for frontline teams. Our mobile platform makes it easy for teams and employees to learn when and where it’s best for them. Our eLearning software makes content creation intuitive and supports a variety of file types. Lessons and courses are created then distributed to teams or individual employees. With the quizzing and open-ended question features, managers can see how well learners learn, track their progress, and gather feedback for further training improvements.

Regardless of whether or not you’re ready to switch to a new eLearning platform or you need to put one in place, consider the eLearning software and authoring tools you’ll need to get your team up to speed and keep them there. Want to try out Seismic Learning? Get a demo from one of our teammates and we’ll show you Seismic Learning in action.

The post eLearning Software Guide appeared first on Seismic.

The goal of customer service training is to equip agents with the necessary skills, knowledge and resources to improve support and customer satisfaction levels. Training in customer service includes a wide variety of topics including product knowledge, technology fundamentals, soft skills and company-wide processes. A good customer service training programme includes a thorough onboarding process that equips new agents with the fundamental skills and knowledge they need to interact with customers. After onboarding, agents need ongoing customer service training and coaching for continuous improvement and growth.

The importance of customer service training

Great customer service is a competitive advantage for any business. The most impactful way to figure out how to improve customer service lies with those who are interacting with customers on a daily basis – your agents. However, nearly half of all call centre agents say they don’t have access to the information or tools they need to best serve their customers. Great customer service training provides the right tools, knowledge and skills agents need to support customers and set your business apart from your competition. So, if you want to keep your agents and customers happy, customer service should be your top priority. Here are just a few more reasons why this is the case: 

• Companies that invest in customer service training have more engaged employees and see 24% higher profits than those that don’t.
• Over 46% of customers say they’d go to a competitor due to an agent’s lack of knowledge during an interaction. 

The benefits of using customer service training tools

Customer service teams can deliver training in a number of ways, ranging from instructor-led training sessions to agent shadowing and in-person training seminars. Customer service training software is the most effective training method because it frees up valuable resources that can be used to better serve existing customers, grow your customer base and improve operations across your support team. Let’s take a closer look at a few advantages of using customer service training tools. 

Onboard new agents quickly

The average turnover rate for customer service agents in call centres is 45%. With high turnover rates, companies must hire new agents and get them up to speed quickly without skipping essential onboarding. Instead of asking new agents to complete a few days worth of onboarding that provides too much information at once, online training tools streamline the onboarding process and deliver essential training to agents over time so they’re more likely to comprehend training materials.

Train teammates consistently and efficiently

Online training also provides agents with a consistent learning experience across the team. This is key for great customer service as it ensures that your agents all have the same understanding and knowledge in order to provide customers with the same level of service across the organisation. Pulling agents off the floor for group training sessions is a costly process. Since customer service training software provides agents with training right from their computer, they can easily complete training lessons in-between customer interactions or during scheduled idle time. This is an efficient way to ensure that agents still receive the training they need while being available to assist customers as the business needs.

Provide on-demand access

Agents need to know and understand a lot of information regarding your company’s products, services, policies, and more. Because it’s nearly impossible to remember everything after training is completed, it’s important to give agents ongoing access to training materials. By giving agents access to a central training platform, they can quickly search for critical information and answers they need, right when they need them, in order to deliver fast, accurate service.

How to improve training with customer service training software

Companies that leverage customer service training software have the opportunity to create dynamic, engaging and effective training like never before. Here are some strategies to keep in mind in order to create the best customer service training programmes possible.

Focus on one skill at a time

Often, trainers are working under a time crunch and feel the need to combine multiple pieces of information or focus on multiple skills in one training session. When it comes to creating the best customer service courses for agents, remember to keep things short and simple. Great online training lessons should only focus on one topic or skill at a time and take about 20 minutes for agents to complete. This structure makes it easier for agents to comprehend new knowledge and complete training in one instance.

Look for better ways to engage agents

Practical training is more than handing agents a customer service training manual full of jargon and lengthy text. Look for a customer service training tool that supports elements like text, images, videos, PDFs, and more. Remember, everyone has different learning styles, so look for ways to incorporate various materials into your courses in order to encourage engagement.

Practice and hone essential skills

The best customer service training programmes also allow agents to practice skills through role-playing scenarios. Customer service training software gives agents the chance to walk through common customer scenarios and practice responses before actually interacting with customers. This is also a great way to review an agent’s progress and provide coaching and feedback on any skill gaps. This will boost their confidence and ensure that they’re ready to interact with customers on a daily basis. 

Track training progress and comprehension

A traditional classroom training session makes it difficult to know if your agents comprehend and can apply what they are learning. Customer service training software tracks critical training information, like completion rates, quiz scores and satisfaction scores, so trainers can collect valuable data on your training programme over time.

Provide ongoing training opportunities

The best customer service training programmes provide ongoing training opportunities so agents can improve skills, stay up to date with product information and company changes, and re-visit customer service training modules as needed.

Customer service training ideas

Now that you understand what customer service training software is and how it can take your training programmes to the next level, here are a few customer service training ideas that are a great place to start.

• What is customer service? It’s crucial that every agent on your support team understands your company’s definition of customer service. By understanding the level of service your company expects, your agents will be more likely to provide the type of experience that they’re expected to deliver.
• Product and service knowledge: In order to adequately address customer issues, agents need to be knowledgeable about the products and services your company provides. The more they know about your company’s offering, the better positioned they’ll be to accurately answer any question or issue that comes up. 
• Customer service policies and procedures: How should agents handle upset customers? When do they escalate an issue to a manager? When can they offer a refund or exchange? Agents need to understand your company’s policies and procedures in order to deliver consistent levels of support across the business. 
• Customer service certifications: Certifications are great for teams with tiered customer support agents who require varied skill sets or expertise depending on their role. This allows agents to complete ongoing training courses and earn a customer service certification online. Managers and trainers can also track these certifications to ensure agents meet the required learning paths or levels of training for their current or future roles. 
• Customer service skills: Soft skills such as effective communication, active listening, emotional intelligence and problem-solving are essential for every agent to have. While some of these skills may come more naturally than others, it’s best to provide training and practice opportunities to keep these skills sharp. 

Deliver the best online customer service training with Seismic

Ready to take your company’s customer service from good to great? With Seismic, customer service teams can quickly ramp up new agents, provide continuous learning, practice and hone essential skills, and measure training’s impact on customer satisfaction. Read how one customer decreases new agent ramp time by 80% and earns an average CSAT score of 94% with online training and coaching powered by Seismic. Or, jump into a free lesson and we’ll show you what your customer service training courses can look like. 

The post Customer service training software appeared first on Seismic.

Web-based training, also called computer-based training or online training software, delivers training to employees that’s available anytime, anywhere.

Online employee training platforms are used in a variety of organisations, industries, and other environments. Its flexibility is the ideal solution for providing training to local, global, and remote workforces. With today’s web browsers supporting animation, 3-D virtual reality, real-time audio and video, chat, and conferencing, it has created unparallelled learning and opportunity for training with virtual training platforms. In short, web-based training is designed to effectively meet the training needs of a wide and diverse population of today’s busiest workers.

Web-based training programmes are generally available in two different types of instruction:

• The asynchronous web-based training definition includes a self-paced and self-directed format.
• The synchronous web-based training definition includes an instructor facilitating the course.

There’s also a wide array of methods and web-based training examples, including:

• Screen cam tutorials
• Learning portals
• Hyperlinked pages
• Live web broadcasts
• Streaming audio/video
• Interactive methods
• Chats
• Desktop video conferencing
• Threaded discussions

So now, you don’t have to ask “What is web-based learning?” anymore. For your own company, you should be able to establish your own web-based learning definition. Every individual or organisation will have their own definition due to their differing needs.

The benefits of web-based training software

Fans and advocates of web-based training feel it’s the ideal solution for continuing training and learning because it’s available on-demand, cost-efficient, and doesn’t require any travel. On the other hand, critics highlight that there are both pros and cons of eLearning and believe that web-based training is an appropriate solution for self-motivated, independent learners.

How can a company train a group of employees across the globe in radically different cultures, languages, and timezones? The answer is simple: web-based training software. Web-based training eliminates the need for costly flights and keeps an organisation aligned on what matters most, even from thousands of miles apart. Let’s take a glance at a few key web-based training advantages and the benefits of online training:

Web-based software is convenient for any schedule

When it comes to working remotely, nearly 77% of workers say they feel happier being able to work from home. And, as more companies embrace full-time remote work, web-based training software provides employers and employees alike the versatility and career growth they need. As top talents demand more workplace options and benefits than ever, web-based training for employees enables them to learn at their convenience, wherever they choose.

Training is available on-demand with web-based software

Online training platforms require no waiting to get started with training. A company no longer has to onboard new hires at the same time or wait for a large group of new hires. Instead, as business ebbs and flows, web-based training software allows a company to onboard when needed. And online training platforms free human resource employees from unnecessary time spent training, allowing them to focus on other areas of work or hone in on the most important topics in-person.

Web-based training software is a browser’s best friend

Employees bring different talents to organisations. For employees that aren’t as digitally savvy, using web-based training platforms can prevent potential technical issues stemming from downloadable software or apps. Web-based training software plays well with every operating system, so employees can nearly use web-based software with any browser—which means less fretting about which operating system or type of computer employees use.

E-Learning software is made for the company’s wallet

Predicting onboarding costs can be difficult. Online training platforms are cloud-based meaning that companies know the exact cost every month. With LMS software, companies can evaluate and manage their onboarding expenses transparently and effectively. An LMS also means no more costly travel for employees to fly across the country or globe to attend training, but because web-based training software is friendly for reps in any locale.

Stay aligned and consistent with web-based training

Global companies face the challenge of communicating and staying aligned about the things that matter most. With web-based training software, teams can refresh themselves on the company’s vision as needed. Organisations can schedule quarterly or semi-annual training using the online training system, diminishing the issue of alignment. They also could push out essential information in minutes, allowing rapid back-and-forth flows of information and feedback from corporate leaders to frontline workers. When conducting exclusively live training, it’s easy to see how certain HR employees could deliver training differently or potentially miss a valuable point. Especially in areas like compliance, a company’s LMS software ensures consistency and helps employees stay one step ahead.

Features of web-based training platforms to look for

The process of evaluating web-based training software or e-learning systems should be done based on the needs of the organisations. With hundreds of different online training systems available, it’s important to make sure you choose the ideal LMS system for your organisation. While there are several different criteria to look for in web-based training tools, it’s vital to consider and include the following attributes in your assessment of web-based learning tools.

Assigning abilities

Since not every lesson will be designed for everyone within the organisation, it’s important to be able to assign courses to specific groups. The web-based learning management system should allow you to quickly assign and enrol members in courses based on the needs of the organisation. As you assign curriculum to different groups and individuals, the web-based training software should also allow you to assign completion dates or time frames the training has to be completed. Web-based training examples of time frames would be a new employee that is required to complete a certain number of core courses within their first 120 days of employment.

Tracking abilities

The online course software you choose should also be a valuable tracking tool for training and employee development. The majority of web-based training software systems will provide you with some sort of tracking features, but the best also includes reporting and notification features. These types of additional features ensure nothing is lost in the shuffle of large company-wide training initiatives or a surge to finish a special required training within a set amount of time.

Easy-to-build lessons

Above all, it’s imperative to be able to easily and quickly build lessons. While a lot of today’s web-based learning software is difficult to use and may seem like it requires a degree, it’s best to keep it simple. Instead of using difficult software to create online training modules, look for a computer-based training programme that includes things like drag and drop functionality and one-click text edit capability. After all, building a training lesson shouldn’t be more difficult than writing and sending an email.

Interactivity and engaging features

Just because your organisation starts using training and development software tools, it doesn’t mean that employees will automatically engage with training. The best web-based training tools allow lesson builders to add interactive elements throughout training content so employees don’t stare at a static screen full of text. By including elements like knowledge checks, images, and videos, pictures, quizzes, and practise exercises to reinforce training content, employees are more likely to engage with training and remember what they just learnt. This is much better than having them gloss over paragraphs of text, hitting the finish button, and going about their day.

The freedom and flexibility of web-based learning

At the core, the definition of online learning is synonymous with the Internet: it’s always on and always available. Because of this ubiquitous nature, online web-based learning has become increasingly popular. Web-based learning software offers users and the organisation several benefits, such as:

• Learners gain access to experts and colleagues from various geographic locations that they would typically not have the ability to communicate with.
• Training happens anyplace and any time that Internet access is available.
• Individuals are able to learn around their schedule at their own pace within the provided time frame.
• Learners can take advantage of continuous, lifelong learning without quitting their jobs, relocating, or having to stop the flow of their normal jobs.

In addition to offering the trainees more freedom and benefits, organisations enjoy many cost benefits, such as:

• Reduced costs for the organisation because of fewer facility fees and travel-related costs.
• Web-based learning software is less expensive when considering the worldwide distribution and district-wide distribution of training pertaining to a limited number of participants in a classroom.
• Web-based training lessons can be recycled or updated for additional training.

What is eLearning, and how is it related?

The definition of eLearning is the utilisation of electronic technologies to access educational information outside of the typical classroom. Most eLearning definitions refer to a course, programme, or degree that is also delivered completely online. There are several different types of eLearning, such as the following:

• The definition of text-driven eLearning includes simple content through graphics, text, some audio, and simple test questions. The most common example of text drive eLearning courses is compliance courses.
• The best way to define e-learning courses is text-driven courses with visual interactive components to enhance learning.
• Simulation eLearning places a heavy emphasis on portraying concepts through different mediums, including text, graphics, audio, and video examples. Following these lessons, simulation e-learning lessons typically include a “try-it” mode, where users can prove the skills they just learned.

What is eLearning design?

To realise all the outstanding advantages of e-learning, it’s important to have an effective e-learning checklist that includes some mixture of the following criteria:

1. Did you analyse the identified needs of your team, time constraints, and budgets?
2. Have you examined and analysed your e-learning audience or users?
3. Are the course requirements consistent with the course objectives?
4. Did you complete a task analysis?
5. Does the course structure meet the instructional goals?
6. Did you use a wide array of different instructional theories or models?
7. Is the content offered in snackable and bite-size chunks of information for the participants?
8. Are the headings clear and concise?
9. Does each slide have bullet points?
10. Does the design include a sufficient number of presentations, such as multimedia?

Find web-based training software that employees love

Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly by Seismic)’s training platform for employees makes it easy to create engaging onboarding, hone essential skills, and deliver effective feedback to your entire organisation. Our user-friendly and simple web-based learning solution is purpose-built to help teams learn, practise, and grow. We make it easy to create, deliver, manage, and access training content so teams can train when and where it’s best for them. We also feature interactive tools like quizzes, assessments, and practise exercises to engage learners and ensure they retain what they’re learning.

While there are plenty of choices for free online training for employees, teams drive real business change with our training software. Want to learn more? Get a demo with us and we’ll show you around.

The post Web-based training software guide appeared first on Seismic.

There are nearly 3 million customer service employees in the U.S. As the face of many businesses, customer service reps are largely responsible for the quality of service offered to customers. While many executives and leaders think that their reps are delivering great customer service, the reality is they aren’t. This is a costly disconnect. U.S. companies lost more than $75 million one year because of poor service.

Delivering great customer service has many contributing factors, but customer service training lies at the heart of this challenge. Without proper customer service representative training and enablement, reps don’t have the knowledge and skills they need to provide service that sets them apart from their competitors. When everyone is trained on their company’s customer service standards, products and services, and processes, they’re more likely to go the extra mile, deliver amazing experiences, and do better work, today and for years to come.

The future of customer service

The customer service industry is in the midst of a revolution. From AI and chatbots to data and automation, customer service leaders have to juggle their training efforts with the latest and greatest service and experience trends. Here are some of the top trends impacting the future of customer service.

Artificial intelligence and technology

“The keyword is automation. A customer care leader or operations leader will need to understand its context and understand how to test things. There’s no roadmap for integrating automation and AI, so it’ll be important to test, evaluate, and see what works best for your customer base.”

— Neal Topf, President, Callzilla 

Ideal customer service reps

“Agents aren’t going anywhere. There are actually companies going as far as saying they won’t use chatbots. What is happening, though, is that self-service functionality is improving significantly between the integration of knowledge bases, AI, and machine learning. This will change the role of the agent from being just an answering service to being savvier, technically driven, and just a higher level of employee.”

— Fred Stacey, GM, Cloud Contact Centre Search, Outsource Consultants 

“Agents are going to be the ones who handle more complex situations. They’ll handle more difficult interactions and they’re going to need a really developed skill set. These more complex interactions with customers also means higher expectations that agents will need to meet.”

— Adam Toporek, Customer Experience Speaker, Customers that Stick

Customer service enablement

“We’ll have some pretty cool advancements in how our agents are more than informed and more capable of providing great service. It’s less of navigating all of the systems or having access to a giant binder and more of being fed continuous training and resources that better equip them to do their job.”

— Justin Robbins, Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Talkdesk

Data-driven processes

“We’re going to have more information about who our customers are and what they want more than ever before. We’ll be armed with better data and stronger priorities. So, we’ll need to execute on changes that need to be made to improve customer experience management and do it the right way.”

— Nate Brown, Co-founder, CX Accelerator 

The challenges ahead

These emerging trends also mean that customer service leaders are experiencing new challenges and greater expectations. Executives and managers have plenty of hurdles to overcome in order to enable reps to deliver service that stands out from the rest.

“What I’m still finding is that the phone is still my largest channel for consumers to reach us. It still outweighs chat, email, and self-service. We still need to remember the fact that people still want to interact with a human being.”

— Lisa Diehl, Manager, Consumer Advocacy – Global Retail Division, North American Consumer, Blue Diamond Growers

“One of the biggest challenges that we have in customer service is multitasking. We’re not very good at trying to do more than one thing at a time, yet we set up most customer service jobs as multitasking. This environment is unhealthy and makes it harder to get a specific task. It also increases the chance for reps to make errors.”

— Jeff Toister, Founder of Toister Performance Solutions and Author of Get Service Right

“Customers have really high expectations and are much more demanding than they were even two years ago. So, the expectation and the demand is so much higher in terms of how reps have to respond. It puts a lot of pressure on customer service teams to help and satisfy those customer needs.”

— Mike Aoki, President, Reflective Keynotes

“The industry just hasn’t done a good job as a whole developing a toolset to make onboarding and then the continuing education process really effective. A lot of contact centres simply put an agent through very basic training and a lot of it isn’t even digital in format or delivery which lacks consistency.”

— Fred Stacey, GM, Cloud Contact Centre Search, Outsource Consultants

“To me, training delivery is one of the biggest challenges. It’s difficult to understand what should be trained versus what should be coached. I’m convinced that there’s so much training that’s wasted because it’s the wrong content delivered in the wrong way.”

— Thomas Siebert, Consulting Director, TBS Inc. Consulting 

Assess: talk to reps and look at data

Creating the best customer service training possible starts with an honest evaluation of your team’s current efforts today. You need the right data and information to make educated decisions about training.

“We need to make sure to meet with the subject matter experts, look at major data points, and then consider totally fresh and brand new data sets.”

— Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator, Customer Service, Moen

Excellent assessment is all about listening to team members, reviewing data, and considering the market. The goal of this phase is to help customer service leaders identify successes and challenges in training and accurately gauge the team’s learning needs. It’s a crucial first step to doing better work. Here are three ways to start assessing your team’s training programme:

Listen to your team

“Training is the cornerstone of every customer service programme. I look at the quality of the trainer, the presentation, and the content. If the content isn’t good I expect feedback from the training team.”

— Thomas Siebert, Consulting Director, TBS Inc. Consulting

One of the easiest ways to gather information about your customer service team’s training efforts and learning needs is to ask team members. When getting input from your team, it’s important not to generalise. Instead of focusing on training for every employee, look at one role at a time to discover what frontline agents need and want. This is also a good time to gather feedback from supervisors, managers, and trainers about what things need to improve or change for that job function. This laser-focus makes it easier to identify trends for each role, rather than creating generic, non-specific training.

So, how can leaders and executives promote and elicit feedback? Consider giving every rep and agent the chance to ask questions and provide feedback at the end of every training programme. Leaders can also gather feedback through anonymous surveys, one-on-one meetings, and performance reviews.

Gather the data that matters

Leaders should use data to map, maximise, and measure their customer service team’s training and enablement programme. There are a variety of possible data inputs to consider when gathering information including:

• Business objectives
• Department goals
• Past individual and team performance
• Learner engagement
• Learner satisfaction
• Training KPIs
• Industry benchmarks
• Market factors

While all of these are important to consider, team leaders and trainers should determine and prioritise the insights that are the most valuable and essential to assess training. It’s important to know which pieces of data are valuable, and which are just noise.

The more data inputs that are evaluated, the better the final training product will be. For example, if you get input from new agents, but not seasoned frontline agents, you might not consider creating training content that helps veteran team members progress in their career and keep skills fresh—or vice versa! It’s also beneficial to reflect on upcoming organisational changes such as hiring plans and product releases to see how every angle of the business can impact training.

Identify successes and challenges

Once leaders receive feedback from the team and review data insights, it will be easier to pinpoint their training program’s successes and challenges. It’s important to identify key processes and employee performance expectations then assess training in light of these to see what is and isn’t working. If a team consistently meets certain performance objectives but fails to accurately solve customer problems on the first interaction, it’s likely they need additional training and resources on services, products, and processes.

An effective time to highlight successes and identify challenges is during quarterly reviews. This time frame is not too long, not too frequent, but just right for training assessment. A quarterly cadence ensures every team member is enabled with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve objectives—quarter after quarter.

Great customer service skills needed for success

“People who are good with customers come from all walks of life. They just have to prove that they’re good, adept, agile and like interacting with customers to solve their problems.”

— Neal Topf, President, Callzilla 

While assessing, it’s likely that teams will uncover a variety of customer service skills that employees want and need their customer service training to focus on. Because customer service is multi-faceted, there are a number of qualities that every top-notch customer service rep should embody. We talked to our network of customer service experts and practitioners, who shared a number of key areas that customer service skills training should focus on. Here are just 10 customer service representative skills to consider:

Active listening: Understanding the customer’s problem correctly and anticipating possible questions is the key to effective and successful interactions.

Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings with another person. This is critical for customer service reps who need to be able to see the customer’s point of view, solve their problems, and represent the company in the best way.

Effective communication: In today’s omnichannel environment, customer service reps and employees need to know how to communicate clearly both verbally and in written form.

“Training often isn’t about soft skills. But when you think about it, those are the things that drive customer emotion and impact the connection with the customer. The soft skills training and the ability to communicate effectively and demonstrate empathy are what’s really going to make an impact.”

— Adam Toporek, Customer Experience Speaker, Customers that Stick 

Patience: Many service interactions are a result of a customer’s problem or question. Customer service reps need to remain calm and work at a pace the customer feels comfortable with to create a positive experience.

Problem-solving: Customers won’t always diagnose their issues correctly. A great rep takes the initiative to solve the issue at hand and anticipate any future problems the customer may have and address it during the current interaction.

“The training side of things is really more of a focus on emotional intelligence, empathy skills, being able to defuse irate customers and build loyalty.”

— Mike Aoki, President, Reflective Keynotes

Agility: Working in customer service is unpredictable. A strong customer service rep is ready and willing to absorb new changes, adapt to new processes, and uncover new solutions.

Goal-oriented focus: Every customer service agent needs to understand their individual, team, and company goals and how their role directly impacts each. When this is clear, they’re more likely to go the extra mile and do what they can to create exceptional service.

Team player: Being able to work for the good of the entire customer service team creates a positive and supportive environment. This will increase rep morale, drive productivity, and result in extraordinary interactions.

“Reps need to have a genuine passion for your product, your service, and your customer base. They also need to be able to adapt to change and read between the lines to navigate the grey area. It’s all about their hunger to learn and willingness to lean in and do the work.”

— Justin Robbins, Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Talkdesk 

Commitment to development: Working in customer service is unpredictable, so the best reps need to be committed to personal and professional development. They welcome opportunities to learn and the chance to recharge their skills over time.

Product knowledge: The best front-line teammates need to have a deep knowledge of their company’s product or service. Without knowing how these items work, just like a customer who uses it every day would, reps won’t be able to help customers when they run into problems.

“Skills that we often train for are things like listening, understanding, and the ability to take the customer’s needs into consideration. But they also need to have the ability to map that to the tools, policies, and procedures in order to find a solution no matter what the customer’s issue is.”

— Thomas Siebert, Consulting Director, TBS Inc. Consulting

How to master customer service soft skills training

Despite the importance of soft skills on a customer service skills list, most training programmes primarily focus on hard skills for customer service and knowledge about products, services, software, and processes. But, a blended training approach on hard and soft skills can drastically improve the quality of customer service. These customer service training ideas will help teach, reinforce, and refine good customer service skills to provide a superior customer experience every time.

1. Storytelling—One of the most effective ways to teach soft skills is through a story. Story-based learning creates an immersive experience and allows reps to emotionally connect with the subject matter. Leaders can easily utilise a scenario-based story to convey how reps should use a particular soft skill to create a great customer experience.
2. Shadowing—Consider including call shadowing as part of your new hire onboarding process. This is a great opportunity to help new hires to experience soft skills in action, spotlight your best reps, and facilitate connections between team members. When new reps sit-in on different interactions including phone, chat, and email, they gain an understanding of how and when to utilise soft skills. This also provides an opportunity for new agents to ask veteran agents in-depth questions to better understand specific skills.
3. Practise and role play—When it comes to learning soft skills, there is no substitute for realistic practise. Role-playing focuses on relevant customer challenges and mimics interactions that agents have experienced in the past. Role-playing during customer service training can be done in-person, online, or over the phone, and are a great way for agents to develop skills they need during stressful interactions without any negative impact. Role plays also give learners the opportunity to test out both soft skills and knowledge in a practical situation and turn learning into action.

Just remember, while soft skills training is important to every customer service training programme, look for ways to make exercises as fun and interactive as possible. Check out these other customer service training ideas, games, and customer service presentation ideas that offer hands-on and engaging learning opportunities for teams.

Plan: determine what customer service success looks like

Once you’ve assessed your training programme and what skills are most important for your team, it’s time to make a customer service training outline and plan for success.

It’s important to remember the true purpose of training. By following a thoughtful and deliberate process, teams can easily identify essential objectives of customer service training, outcomes, and goals. So when setting goals for your customer service training programme, be sure to prioritise milestones for creation and delivery. This will save your team hours of fruitless work.

“As a trainer, the starting point, step one is always objectives. If I’m committed to creating training, what is the objective of the training? What should someone be able to know or do at the end of this training? The second point then is to figure out what’s the most effective way to get there.”

— Jeff Toister, Founder of Toister Performance Solutions and Author of Get Service Right

“You have a lot of variations on how organisations build their training teams. For some it’s a shared services model, for others it sits within the contact cenre. Or, they use some sort of hybrid. To get the training piece right, teams need to have a really good mechanism for understanding how the customer experience is evolving and what impact that has on training.”

— Justin Robbins, Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Talkdesk 

Identifying customer service training objectives

The best customer service training programmes identify and set clear and measurable outcomes for reps and teams will achieve as a result of learning. It’s beneficial to set your objectives of customer service training for a few different reasons. Not only do objectives make it easier to explain the purpose of training to reps, but it also creates a clear path to reaching larger team and company goals.

When it comes to creating the training objectives for customer service, it’s best to create goals around knowledge transfer, comprehension, and application. It’s not enough to just create and deliver training on a new product or service. Instead, reps need to understand what they’re learning, and be able to apply that new knowledge to their jobs on a daily basis. By doing this, customer service teams can establish goals for customer service success. Here are just a few examples:

• Increased customer sentiment and satisfaction (CSAT, NPS) scores
• Faster onboarding time to productivity for new reps
• Increased number of positive resolutions
• Decreased overall cost to serve
• Fewer customer escalations
• Improved first call resolution rates

If you’re overwhelmed with creating customer service training objectives, remember to keep them short, concise, and easy to understand. If you can’t easily communicate or track objectives with your team, then you’ll want to reconsider those measures and clarify them, too.

Training and the customer service employee lifecycle

Training isn’t just about onboarding—the best teams never stop learning and growing. When planning a training programme, consider the entire employee lifecycle to see how training impacts each stage.

Attraction & Recruitment: Training should be an avid part of any recruiting strategy. Make sure new reps know they’ll be trained, supported, and developed throughout their time at your company.

Onboarding: When people think about training at work, they think of onboarding. Many customer service teams focus heavily on this period so reps ramp as quickly as possible. Time will only become more regimented as the rep begins their work in earnest, so a strong foundation of training is essential.

Development: Whether offering skill development or paths toward promotion, training opportunities should be an integral part of an employee development plan.

Retention: Investing in rep development and long-term success creates happier employees who stick around. Meaningful development leads to better performance and promotion, which increases tenure.

Separation: What happens when your best reps leave? Where does their knowledge go? Democratised training is key to capturing best practises and the knowledge your best team members use every day.

A significant amount of training happens during the onboarding stage. However, it’s key to think and plan holistically about training across the entire employee lifecycle so your team is better prepared for success, every step of the way.

Hiring all-star customer service reps

It’d be a mistake to overlook the importance of hiring. While training may play an important role in the success of customer service employees, it’s still vital to hire the best of the best.

Hiring for a customer service organisation isn’t easy. Is it best to hire for experience, talent, or skill set? Rarely will a perfect candidate show up, so it’s important to know what the team values most and which traits are indicators of future success.

“Think about your audience first. So when you’re hiring for this role, you’re hiring for a very unique skill set. Many customer service departments not only have a tremendous amount of knowledge that they need to learn about the company’s internal computer systems and programmes, but also have the soft skills to be able to work with customers on a daily basis.”

—Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator, Customer Service, Moen

“If a person doesn’t have an interest in problem-solving, helping unblock users, and getting them to see the value in a product then that’s not a good fit for support.”

—Jason Pearson, Head of Product Support, Figma

“I hire talent over experience every day of the week. I believe that if you invest in strong talent it will pay off in the long run, both in terms of tenure, but also an output.”

—Patrick Hawkins, Senior Manager of Customer Support, Virtru

“The first step is going to be to hire better people. Hire more for emotional intelligence, hire now looking at more complex analytical skills. With more easy questions being handled by AI bots, it’s going to leave all the tough ones for the reps. So, they have to really increase in skill level.”

— Mike Aoki, President, Reflective Keynotes

Customer service onboarding and beyond

Onboarding programmes make up the majority of customer service training. These weeks are formative for a rep and can make or break their experience with a company. When designing a customer service onboarding experience, it’s important to consider:

Objectives

Drill down into tactical goals each rep will need to pursue and meet as fully ramped teammate. Some helpful objectives include:

• Ticket resolution standards post-training
• Completion of training in key categories: such as company procedures, the role of customer service at the company, technical & product knowledge, the support process, support tools, and soft skills
• Quota or rep interaction goals

Timeline

We’ve worked with hundreds of teams, and we typically see customer service onboarding periods between 3-6 weeks long. This differs more for teams who do nesting periods of supervised work before heading onto the floor as a full-fledged call centre or customer service rep.

While onboarding may last 3-6 weeks, a rep may not be fully ramped to productivity for months. It takes time, repetition, and investment to get a rep up to speed—which is why training is so vital. Develop a clear onboarding schedule so everyone has expectations for what reps and managers are supposed to accomplish in a given timeframe.

“We do two weeks of training followed by two weeks of nesting. At Earnin it’s a priority to make sure someone is always available when questions come up and to continually collect feedback from new employees throughout the onboarding process. When I joined the team we were hiring 50 agents every other week and we were only doing in-person training followed by hands-on activities. We needed a digital option for scale to help us keep our timeframe.”

—Amber Aslanian, Head of Customer Experience Operations, Earnin

Customer service training topic ideas

Now it’s time to plan out what content will need to be built, for onboarding, ongoing training, or both. When generating ideas, consider three primary customer service training topics or categories: company-wide information, department-specific knowledge, and role-specific skills. If more than just the customer service team is trained on the same process or tools, feel free to use the same company-wide training material for everyone. But, if a new rep needs to know more about SLAs with customers, that’s likely part of role-specific training. As a company grows and customer service training for employees becomes more specialised, these good customer service categories are helpful examples to keep in mind:

Company-wide information: Topics everyone in the company should learn.

1. General company information: What does your company do? What is its mission and vision? What market does it operate in, etc.?
2. Company organisational structure: How are departments and teams organised at the company?
3. Leadership team: Introduce company executives and take the opportunity to imbue tenets of culture.
4. Benefits and company-wide policies: This information should be applicable across teams. If not, move it department-specific or individual training.
5. Company culture: What values do you want to instill in your employees?
6. Product and services: What does this company sell or do?

Department-specific knowledge: Topics every customer service rep should learn, no matter their team or role.

1. What role does the customer service team play in the company?
2. How is success defined on this team? What metrics will we look at?
3. How is the customer service team organised and how are teams defined?
4. What are the tools and processes all customer service teammates should know?
5. What products and services does this call centre or customer service team support?
6. Customer service skills training: What are some great customer service skills to cultivate?

Role-specific skills: Topics that are only relevant for specific roles or small teams. 

1. What are the duties of this specific role or team?
2. What are the team and role-specific processes?
3. What tools will the employee use everyday?
4. Skills training: Both customer service soft skills and technical skills are essential, and should be tailored to the role at hand.
5. Other role-specific product knowledge

Build: work with reps to develop content

The content of your customer service training programme is everything. Without engaging, helpful and modern lessons, training will likely fall short. That’s why the next stage of the Better Work Method focuses on an important element: Build.

When it’s time to start building your training programme, remember that simply transferring information isn’t helpful. It must be easy to digest, remember, and implement. Here are a few tips that any customer service team can use to quickly and effortlessly build customer service training modules and content that their team will love.

Build trust with learners: The first consideration when building training content is trust. Trust is everything in training because reps need to know that the training isn’t a waste of time and will actually help them in their role. Unfortunately the word “training” often comes with a bit of a stigma of being boring, useless, and antiquated. It’s vital to avoid that reputation with employees. Start building trust during onboarding and you’ll likely see increased engagement during the rest of training.

Build for service culture: Training content should also be built directly from the company’s culture. Every piece of information should fit the mission and values of the larger company and help reps be stewards of those values.

“Most organisations define policies and procedures. So customer service employees are trained from the beginning not how to delight customers, but how to follow policy or how to walk people through a procedure or how to use the product. It’s all transactional. As a result you’re training people to be transactional service providers. 

Service culture explicitly defines a focus on serving the customer, a specific way of serving the customer, and keeps everyone working on the same page. There are very few organisations that do that well, but in the organisations that do, the employees know what’s expected and how to interact with a customer.”

— Jeff Toister, Founder of Toister Performance Solutions and Author of Get Service Right

Building exceptional content

There’s a reason instructional designers and professional trainers have been around for so long. Creating useful and helpful training content takes intentionality. There will always be a place for trainers to help lead initiatives.

There are some key principles and customer service training tips to remember when creating content. Before we dive into the tactics of creation, it’s important to note that we’ll largely focus on creating digital content for online customer service training. These principles apply no matter which modern customer service solution is being used—and many of these items are transferable to other types of customer service training formats as well.

Clarity, brevity, usefulness

Today’s employees have lower attention spans and are busier than ever. The top priority should be to create customer service training modules that are clear in meaning, free from fluff, direct, and helpful. If it isn’t, employee engagement will plummet. Even if training is “required,” less engagement usually means less retention and less impact.

“User experience should always be considered. For example, if we’re taking a content focus and we’re telling employees go take these three courses, that’s taking time out of someone’s busy day. And instead of helping them gain new skills, we’re actually creating more stress because they were supposed to get stuff done today. But now they have to spend two hours on this boring required eLearning that doesn’t actually help them do their job any better. That’s a terrible experience.”

—Jeff Toister, Founder of Toister Performance Solutions and Author of Get Service Right

Specialising training

“Let’s say you have to create and design a training for the whole group, which includes tenured associates who’ve been doing this for 27 years and brand new associates who’ve been doing this for five months. They all need to reach the same level without feeling patronised nor in over their heads. So, you must differentiate for each learner type.”

—Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator, Customer Service, Moen

Training, even within the same team and role, should look different. Group training by the needs of the customer service team makes this easier. Onboarding programmes specifically serve new employees, while ongoing training on topics like new products and company procedures are targeted to the entire team.

“A lot of customer service training ends up serving the end goal of helping reps know how to make decisions around escalating customer complaints and when to solve it themselves. The training reps receive helps prevent bottlenecking throughout the organisation by making them more confident and knowledgeable.”

—Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator, Customer Service, Moen

Democratised learning—get the best reps involved

In the past, training has typically been created by trainers. Democratised learning harnesses the expertise of frontline employees to create the most meaningful training. This is becoming more common for customer service teams as it is a scalable way to capture and deploy the most useful knowledge for the team. Democratising training has outsized returns for a few key reasons:

• Teammates on the frontlines of service and support work with customers every day. They have the best insights on what’s working and what isn’t, what customers are feeling, and which problem-solving methods are most important.
• When your best rep leaves the company, where does their knowledge go? Democratised learning enables the team to better capture their knowledge and put it to use for future team members.
• When teammates are involved in creating training, they become more invested in team success. When they are closely involved in content creation, training becomes more legitimised and strengthens bonds between teammates.

“There is an incredible amount of value in having someone who not only is a subject matter expert, but is genuinely passionate about the topic.”

—Justin Robbins, Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Talkdesk

Using microlearning in online customer service training

Presenting lengthy pieces of information during training is incredibly ineffective. Bite-sized learning, with small, focused lessons, is better suited for agent training. Since reps are busy fielding interactions, completing recurring tasks, and trying to meet goals, it’s easier to consume customer service training modules in smaller increments during idle time.

This bite-sized format for learning can also be leveraged for just-in-time training—right when a rep needs it. For example, if a rep is on a call with a customer who has a question about a warranty policy, the agent can instantly access content that holds the answer they need. These contextual training opportunities boost learning retention and provide high value and relevance to reps. In comparison, long training sessions make it harder to remember and reference the information that agents find most beneficial in their day to day work.

Multimedia training content

Text, images, video, interactive tours, quiz questions, notecards, documents…the types of training content available online continues to get bigger every day. But what should be used? And when? The most simple answer is that different topics or goals necessitate different types of customer service training methods—a variety of training types is usually the most effective.

If you’re training on a new product, including video walkthroughs with interactive tours and quiz questions can help reps visualise and retain the information. If releasing new messaging, practise using the messaging via audio or video. For topics like company policies and procedures, text might be easiest and most direct, but consider attaching supporting documents with more detail for employees.

When creating lessons, consider using the following framework when it comes time to decide what type of media to use:

Learn it, see it, do it. For example, let’s say a rep takes a lesson on how to deal with an angry customer. A good learner journey for the lesson would be as follows:

• First, explain what the rep will hear from the customer
• Tell them how to respond
• Then, show an example of the correct response
• Finally, have the rep practise doing it themselves

As each section is built, different elements or interactive pieces can support each portion. Could screenshots help the rep see something more clearly? Does your customer service training software allow reps to practise in a training environment? It’s important to take your training solution’s functionality into consideration during this phase. If it doesn’t allow for practise, this element may need to be done in person.

Getting feedback—share before ready

Training should never be created in a vacuum. This is part of democratised learning, but sharing before ready goes beyond having employees create the training itself.

As seen in the Assess phase, it’s important to involve a variety of team members when building your training programme. Once you draft a new piece of content, share it with a test group of employees who can provide feedback. Aim for variety in this group—people with different job titles, responsibilities, tenure, and more. Sharing drafted content early makes it easier to implement changes before it’s been deployed to the entire team.

A few more building tips

• Focus on the most important 80% of information. There will always be a minority of customer scenarios or information that is missing. Those can be added as they come up, but keep focused on the most common scenarios and skills, especially when first building a training programme. This is especially important to remember during onboarding, where reps should learn the most essential information without being bogged down by every little customer question or scenario.
• If content or lessons can be split into sections, use them liberally to keep sections short. It’s a much better experience to advance through a lesson than to scroll endlessly through one long section.
• Set expectations at the beginning of training. Why are reps receiving this content? How long will it take to complete? What should they know or be able to do when they finish? This sets the tone and frames the content in light of the rep’s responsibilities.

Learn: push content to reps where they are

Once training is planned and prepared, creation begins. The next phase of the Better Work Method, Learn, is all about maximising the impact of training. So, how can your team leverage training and deliver it in a way that fuels performance?

Delivering training

Once content is created, it must efficiently reach learners. This piece of the training experience is often undervalued—it should be an intentional consideration when crafting training strategy. There are four key ways to deliver customer service training online to reps:

Assignments

Assignments notify reps when they have an assignment and provide an easy way to reach the content. Assignments are great for required ongoing training, guided onboarding over time with multiple assignments, or to re-emphasise a piece of content the team should look at.

On-demand

Access to on-demand training is a helpful feature for customer service teams. Time is less flexible for reps, so on-demand learning in-between interactions drives performance and productivity. Ideally, on-demand training is searchable, organised, and easy to consume quickly.

“A lot of information needs to be available to the agent. So, having a library, or another place where they can easily access knowledge, is very important. They don’t know what their next call is going to be or what they consumer is going to throw at them—so it keeps them prepared.”

—Lisa Diel, Manager, Consumer Advocacy, Global Retail Division, North America, Blue Diamond Growers 

Contextual learning

Contextual learning is a fairly new addition to training offerings, and proactively provides the exact training content reps need. This can be done through software integrations with other software tools to make the workflow as seamless as possible.

Mobile learning

Online training should also be accessible via smartphone, either through a dedicated app or a mobile-friendly experience. That means that reps can access training whether onsite with a customer, commuting to the office, or sitting in an airport.

How to market your training customer service training programme

“If you build it, they will come.” While Field of Dreams gets most things right, that logic may not apply to team training. They team may begrudgingly take required lessons, but for meaningful adoption, training should be promoted and marketed internally. The goal is not just to gain awareness, but to build trust and momentum behind training. There are three levels of buy-in that serve as leading indicators of training success.

Leadership

“The biggest hurdle I find is the leadership team, because the reps want the training and ongoing reinforcement. It’s the leadership team that views training as just an initial or one-time issue.”

—Mike Aoki, President, Reflective Keynotes

Getting momentum for training is much easier when it comes from the top. This support provides legitimacy and conveys that learning is a priority. Many customer service leaders are forced to deprioritize customer service training because their department is viewed as a cost centre rather than a profit centre. This puts a strain on efficiency and detracts from customer experience and effective resolutions. But if leadership is on board, ensure training excellence is far easier.

Managers

“When you sit down with a manager and you’re trying to fill gaps, you both have to have the same goal. But, you have conflicting priorities since their role is to get the work done and your goal is the quality of work. There needs to be a lot of trust and managers need to understand what you’re working on and vice versa. If you don’t have your manager’s buy-in, you’re not going to get your training scheduled and done.”

—Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator, Customer Service, Moen

Managers are often the direct line to the frontline customer service representatives. They can be a trainer’s biggest promoter or worst detractor. That’s why managers should have an active part in managing, creating, and reporting on their team’s training. They also must have access to reports on rep performance and progress so they can actively monitor training efforts.

Learners

We’ve talked a lot about building trust with frontline reps. Most employees have a genuine desire to learn, feel confident, and succeed. But they’re also motivated by different things—promotion, money, perks, public praise, etc. For reps who want to progress and grow, it’s important to explain how training can help them reach their goals. But don’t forget to listen to what reps say they really want training on. By providing content that’s tied to their feedback, they’re more likely to engage with and participate in training—and grow as a result.

Practise: reinforce service skills and deliver feedback

Training truly never ends. The best customer service training programmes pair learning with intentional practise and thoughtful coaching. That’s why the Better Work Method focuses on deliberate Practise that involves rehearsal, refinement, and repetition.

“The business is changing around you, the products are changing around you, the teams are changing around you. If you want a really great, up-to-date training programme, it’s constant work.”

—Patrick Hawkins, Senior Manager of Customer Support, Virtu

“There are predictable points where people are going to need certain kinds of training as things change in the business, as the business grows. But there are all sorts of needs that come about during the QA process or just as the needs of our customers change. Customers demand more today than they did three years ago.”

—Sheri Kendall-duPont, Learning and Development Manager, FCR

Where does ongoing training fit?

“I think the right technologies can definitely impact the ability to onboard and do continuous training. I’ve seen plenty of instances where companies have tremendous onboarding programmes, but then they have nothing for the follow-up.”

— Fred Stacey, GM, Cloud Contact Centre Search, Outsource Consultants 

A common challenge for customer service teams is finding the time for continuous training after onboarding. For the most part, reps need to be on the floor serving customers, but that focus on efficiency is an easy excuse to nix training. In the past, ongoing training meant that reps were taken off the floor into a classroom to train. As Fred noted above, now the proper tech can mitigate a lot of that lost time. Reps are enabled to learn at their own pace, between calls or tickets—or even have access to that information during customer interactions for quick reference.

“Training needs to be ongoing so you can reinforce the skills and behaviours that you want employees to exhibit. And most importantly, because this is where a lot of organisations fail with training, it can’t just be about operational skills.”

— Adam Toporek, Customer Experience Expert, Customers that Stick

Some teams dedicate a specific time block to training during the day. While this may work for some, it’s hard for many teams to keep this as a priority. With an online training software, trainers and enablers can regularly provide assignments that reps need to complete by a certain time. Workforce management solutions can be extremely effective in helping find time for ongoing training. Since they track how employees are using their time—and can track productivity across a number of different groups—these tools can be used to find gaps where training could replace an activity or fill downtime.

“Training is not a one-time exercise. It’s not start/stop. It is continuous.”

—Neal Topf, President, Callzilla

How often should ongoing training happen?

“One-time training is like going to the gym once and then saying you’re physically fit. You have to go at least three times a week to the gym to keep it up. And it’s true with training as well. It can’t be a one-time event. It has to be reinforced by different kinds of online training, in-person, team huddles, booster shot training, etc.”

—Mike Aoki, President, Reflective Keynotes

Ongoing training takes on many different forms. It could be anything from a rep quickly reviewing a lesson between calls, to an all-team, in-person practise session. Building cadences of training activities and new content creation is key to training success. Ongoing training should also help reps practise and improve their skills.

“Customer service teams need to be super intentional with their on-demand training. Have a strategy. If you’re moving people up for promotion or helping people who are struggling, you can have specific content tracks or things they should take during any ongoing training time. This content should be intentional and planned with purpose.”

—Alex Mislan, Services Delivery Manager, Lessonly by Seismic Services

In the last section, we mentioned specialised training for certain people or roles. Ongoing training should work the same way. Reps who are falling short should receive targeted training to help them close performance gaps. Meanwhile reps who are thriving can begin training for possible future roles. Across this spectrum, content can focus on new skills, new product releases, promotional paths, or higher support tiers. No matter the purpose, teams can provide practise and ongoing training with:

• Quiz questions in lessons
• Graded practise scenarios (via video, screenshare, or audio)
• In-person role plays with trainers or peers
• Coaching and 1:1s with managers
• Training built by peers on recent learnings

“Leverage customer feedback to find knowledge gaps. You will notice through coaching and customer interactions that employees are struggling in a particular area. It will show in metrics like CSAT and productivity; use that data to create ongoing training.”

—Amber Aslanian, Head of Customer Experience Operations, Earnin

The owner of ongoing training

“If you really want to improve customer service, you need to spend quality time with your team and continue to coach. Just like an athletic team needs continuous coaching, a first-line care team needs constant coaching as well.”

—Bob Davis, Founder and CEO of Robert C. Davis and Associates

If the team has someone in charge of training or enablement, they will usually be responsible for all training efforts. But ongoing training should be a mantra for managers and reps alike—it’s how they all do better work. Managers should always be coaching and working with reps on soft skills, reviewing calls or tickets, and offering daily feedback for improvement. Reps also need to fuel their own learning, but in and out of the office. That means seeking out opportunities for improvement and participating wholeheartedly in training, whether on-demand or live.

Improve practise with effective feedback

Feedback is non-negotiable for growth. Whether through qualitative feedback from a manager or graded questions in an online training software, it should always be built into a training regiment. Faster feedback loops means more improvement. It’s worth remembering that feedback doesn’t always have to come from someone “above” the rep on the org chart. Peer feedback can be extremely helpful. Whether practising together, critiquing each others’ work, offering encouragement, or sharing best practises, this peer-to-peer practise is indicative an organisation committed to growth.

Company culture will often determine if and how peer feedback works best for your team. If there’s intense competition between a less collaborative team, peer feedback might be challenging—it will take concerted effort to shift the culture towards practise. It takes psychological safety for a team to feel comfortable sharing and practising with teammates. But, it’s worth the investment. Sharing feedback between reps who have direct experience working on the frontline is invaluable for growth.

The mode of peer feedback will depend on the tools available. If the training software or learning management system has a feature for it—great! If not, we suggest in-person role plays or asking a thoughtful teammate to create a lesson and assign it out to the team to share best practises.

Continuous rapid improvement

Ongoing training isn’t about setting a single customer service training objective and hitting it. It’s about providing reps with the resources needed to continually grow personally and help the team succeed. Practise is an integral part of any successful training program—just as important as onboarding. It requires strategy, planning, and consistency, but it’s worth the effort: It’s how good work becomes great work.

Perform: empower customer service reps to succeed

In the end, customer service training is about delivering results. If the first five steps we outlined are rockin’ and rollin’, it should be easy for customer service teams to identify KPIs, continuously improve, and deliver results.

Leaders need to tap into the power of data to measure the impact of customer service training on performance. This should include KPIs that measure team performance, as well as metrics that track individual progress. While there’s no doubt that data is important for customer service teams, many still focus on operational metrics and KPIs that are misleading in the modern customer service landscape.

According to Katrina Lallo, Senior Training Coordinator of Moen’s customer service team, these misleading metrics include efficiency metrics like average handle time, average speed of answer, and the number of interactions. While they hold some value, there are other metrics worthy of consideration:

“First and foremost, we need to have a revolution in the workforce, but until that happens and people are willing to let go of those [archaic] metrics, it’s up to learning and development to make sure that people have what they need to do things we need them to do.”

— Sheri Kendall-duPont, Learning and Development Manager, FCR

Nate Brown, co-founder of CX Accelerator agrees with Sheri’s sentiment, “A decision has to be made. Are we going to focus on the quality of support delivered, or are we going to continue to micromanage the quantity and really just focus on the volume and the efficiency metrics?”

So, how should customer service teams think about training KPIs and metrics?

A better way to measure

“Many leaders become confused with the amount of data and metrics that they have at their disposal. The first step is to determine what the few most important metrics are and keep your eyes on them.”

— Bob Davis, Founder and CEO, Robert C. Davis and Associates

To radically prioritise customer service and experience, leaders must evolve how they define and track success. Instead of prioritising operational KPIs, managers and leaders should focus on data that indicates great customer service that truly puts the customer first. These metrics track the quality of service and rep performance. Let’s take a closer look at a few:

First Contact Resolution: FCR measures the rate at which customers’ questions or problems are solved correctly on the first contact. This is an important indication of customer satisfaction and the effectiveness of reps. When a rep is confident and knowledgeable, they’re more likely to have higher FCR stats.

Net Promoter Score: NPS tracks the loyalty of customers based on how likely they are to recommend a product or service to someone else. While this may be subjective because it’s based on the most recent interaction, it’s a good way to identify areas for improvement on a rep and team level.

Customer Satisfaction Scores: CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a company. Some customer service leaders note that the CSAT only captures a minority of customer insight, but it can still provide a broad picture of areas where customer service is excelling and where there are gaps.

Service+Quality: This multifaceted KPI aims to capture more subjective elements of customer service including reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness. This metric can also highlight excellent customer service rep qualities and areas where they need to improve.

Employee Churn: Also known as agent turnover, churn measures the percentage of reps and agents who leave the company. If teams experience a high level of churn, it may be time to review onboarding and training to improve employee engagement.

Teams that prioritise metrics like those listed above will have a healthy understanding of their customer’s behaviours and their reps’ performance. This will make it easier to highlight areas of success and discover where they need to concentrate efforts to improve individual and team service levels.

“If you want your customer service representatives to be consulted, helpful, and really take their time to maximise the quality of the support, you can’t do that while rushing people off the phone. It’s impossible. But, if you take the time to focus on quality, the quantity and efficiency metrics take care of themselves.”

— Nate Brown, Co-founder, CX Accelerator 

Connecting the dots between customer service training and performance

While some teams simply update and track their KPIs, world-class teams take it a step further and tie customer service representative training directly to their performance metrics and KPIs.

“Once you determine the metrics that really matter, the next step is to discover what behaviours drive those metrics. That’s where the training, coaching and ongoing support toward those behaviours drive desired results.”

— Bob Davis, Founder and CEO, Robert C. Davis and Associates 

To best determine how individual, team, and company performance is impacted by training, we recommend looking at KPIs across four different levels:

Tier 1: These metrics focus on employee learning efforts and include items such as learner engagement, training satisfaction scores, and the percentage of employees who complete training.

Tier 2: Once teams have an idea how their reps and agents rate training, it’s beneficial to tie training to revenue. Look at metrics that can determine, or at least approximate, how much money is saved and earned as a result of training efforts.

Tier 3: Now look at metrics that relate specifically to customer service skills. By reviewing efficiencies, key skills, and past successes, customer service leaders can determine what training is working—and where there are still gaps.

Tier 4: Since training is about improving the bottom line, the fourth level of metrics should directly tie team training to business objectives for maximum impact.

Before implementing any customer service training programme, it’s important to understand each metric’s baseline. This will make it easier to identify if there’s a change before and after training. Katrina Lallo recommends revisiting a topic or skill that impacts the specific KPI, then measuring both accuracy and overall productivity of reps to show a correlation between training and performance.

After choosing the best metrics and KPIs, it’s just as important to communicate these measures to new and experienced reps. Better performance takes thoughtful employee enablement. Meaningful enablement ensures that reps know what’s expected of them, how they’ll be evaluated, and what they can do to improve.

“I’ve seen contact centres throughout the world where the agents get out to the floor and they don’t even really know what or why they’re measured on something, let alone really have a good understanding of how to improve.”

— Fred Stacey, GM, Cloud Centre Search & Outsource Consultants

Training that drives KPIs

Teams who meaningfully leverage training see higher CSAT scores, an increase in NPS, and a decrease in attrition rates. We asked some of our customers what training topics contribute to their improved KPI scores—here are a few of their favourites:

• Going above and beyond for the customer: Nothing helps explain the lengths that reps should go to for customers like first-hand stories. Crowdsource stories from existing reps that detail times they went the extra mile to deliver excellent service. This makes the content more real and engaging for other team members.
• How to deal with an upset customer: The way reps handle situations with angry or upset customers makes the difference between redeeming the relationship—and earning a good CSAT—or losing their business. Take the time to train reps on what not to do to keep complaints from going from bad to worse.
• Why we want active promoters: NPS can be difficult to understand. Explain why it’s important to track it and how it benefits the entire business.
• How to ask customers to take their survey: NPS lives and dies on the willingness of customers to take the survey. Train reps to guide customers through the surveys to ensure that NPS is correctly calculated.

Customer service training for the enterprise

Many of the topics discussed in this guide apply to teams of all sizes. Online training, including practise in ongoing training initiatives, democratised learning, and on-demand content are all examples of ways customer service enablement can extend into the enterprise and scale learning. The need for these concepts becomes even more important in large organisations and becomes non-negotiable for success. While the tenets of the Better Work Training Method apply to any team, enterprise teams have unique challenges and opportunities as they pursue effective training.

Training outsourced customer service teams

“Outsourced teams and BPOs will continue to be part of major corporations’ contact centre strategies. I don’t see that changing. And the level of training that’s required when you shift operations offshore is elevated. Doing business in multiple countries means multi-language support and 24/7 support, both of which are hard to provide from one time zone.”

—Brad Baumunk, President and COO at Robert C. Davis and Associates

Outsourcing customer service is much more common in larger companies—since they often have more complex customer service needs than a smaller company. As Brad mentioned, doing business in multiple countries means multi-language support and 24/7 support—both of which are hard to provide from one time zone. Oftentimes, offshore options are cheaper than doing it here in the United States. Training these teams comes with some challenges, and it’s vital to instill the right culture and trust when working with an outsourced call centre or customer support team.

“It’s all about finding a partner that shares your philosophy. From there, being able to gauge lesson feedback quickly from the outsourced reps is super important. The great thing about digitised training for offshore teams is they can create content quickly and can reach audiences of 1,000 or more people within minutes.”

—Amber Aslanian, Head of Customer Experience Operations, Earnin

“Culture is extremely important. Try to get as close to a culture match with your outsourced partner, knowing it will never be perfect. Get the outsourced provider to understand how you operate. Not only what your brand voice is and what customer experience you want to provide your customers, but how does the customer care team need to operate?”

—Neal Topf, President, Callzilla

Neal also provided some great questions to think about when considering a BPO partner:

• What familiarity do they have with your product or your industry?
• How easy or difficult would it be to train them?
• How willing and ready are they to be trained?
• Are they set in their ways or are they going to be willing to take instruction, direction, recommendations, and coaching to better improve how they perform on your behalf?
• How closely does their culture match yours?

Once initial training is done, the next challenge is figuring out how to manage continuous improvement in a BPO.

“One of the biggest challenges is to understand what should be trained versus coached, and what is the right methodology to deliver that. And one of the biggest challenges at many BPOs that I’ve worked with is trying to identify what content to offer after the initial training, as well as who should get what training.”

—Thomas Siebert, Consulting Director, TBS Inc. Consulting

How do problems change at scale?

Complex companies often have complex problems, especially for those with offshore customer service teams. These companies need to ensure that reps who are located across multiple locations receive consistent training, which is why intentional customer success enablement is essential.

“I have four locations, so I need to make sure that the material we use for training is consistent, that one of my centres isn’t saying one thing that the other centre didn’t know about. We need to make sure materials are accurate, and some people here on my team are actually lead points for different agents and outsourced vendors.”

— Lisa Diehl, Manager, Consumer Advocacy, Global Retail Division, North America, Blue Diamond Growers 

Here are a few problems exacerbated by a large team, and how to frame them:

• Specialising training: In smaller companies, it’s easier to specialise training by role, team, and department. In large organisations or outsourced teams, more variables need to be considered like training for different languages, supporting entirely different products, and delivering a consistent customer experience across the org.
• Democratising learning: Bringing on creators from within the team goes further in the enterprise, where training needs are larger. Get as much help from top performers as possible, in order to keep training helpful, high-quality, and high-impact.
• Empowering managers: Team managers in larger companies must take an active role in training. They must feel the responsibility for actually managing the training experience of their team, especially through regular coaching and feedback. A trainer can’t possibly evaluate thousands of practise scenarios and lessons, that work must be shared with managers and experienced reps.
• Peer feedback: A culture of empowerment and sharing knowledge between reps raises the bar of performance across teams. Look for opportunities to foster a company culture of feedback and continuous improvement—that’s how to keep a team agile in a large corporation.
• Channel needs: New channels like chat, knowledge bases, and AI are more recent additions to the menu of options for serving customers. Utilising new channels can be difficult to scale effectively, because of the complexity of support required. In order to drive adoption for new technologies, focus on enablement so teammates have the utmost clarity about how this new tool will impact their daily work—and the daily experience of customers.

Free customer service training materials

Now that you know what it takes to take your customer service training plan from good to great, it’s time to get started. Check out some of our customer service training materials that your team can use to learn, practise, and do better work.

Customer Service Training Manual Template: Achieve consistent and thorough customer service training for employees.

Customer Service Policy Examples: Build guidelines and policies for customer service success.

Customer Service Games: Customer service training doesn’t have to be boring. Take a look at some of these interactive training activities.

The post The customer service training guide appeared first on Seismic.

The evolution of online learning management systems

An online LMS has evolved employee training, and continues to develop year over year. Because of this, the online learning management system has become mostly software-as-a-service, or SaaS. LMS vendors that house, maintain, and develop a learning software platform usually do so for a contracted fee. This tends to be a big weight relief from the shoulders of businesses because they need to focus on training, not how to implement or fix the system software in use.

Learning management system features used to be very limited compared to what is provided today. There was no such thing as a web-based learning management learning system. Learning software was hard-wired to computers, meaning in order to access it, the programme had to be installed onto each computer it was used on. Even further, content had to be created outside of the learning management system, then processed through a model called SCORM. LMS could then comprehend content.

So, you can imagine how tedious of a process this was and how many people it took to maintain a system. There had to be content created, server space, and someone (or a team) to maintain it all. Because creating and programming content was so time-consuming, recycled training content became repetitive and outdated. Luckily, those days are over. Now, learning management system vendors tend to offer, within their software packaging, free LMS hosting and the essential learning management tools you need to store, deliver, and track great employee training materials.

At the end of the day, online learning software has enabled learners to learn in their best environment and trainers to reinforce that information through performance. Even further, because learning software has become so simple, anyone can contribute to a joint knowledge online learning management system. By having a collection of resources and lessons for joint knowledge online, help desk services become a thing of the past! The best LMS software available is a software that makes the tasks in learning simple, so that the actual learning retention of employees remains a top priority.

We’re going to talk about three types of online learning management systems: web-based, SCORM-compliant, open-source learning management systems. These three systems aren’t necessarily separate entities but have outstanding factors that differentiate one from others.

Web-based learning management systems

This is exactly what it seems. Instead of having to hardwire the LMS software to each computer, you can access the software from any computer. The software takes the form of a platform LMS. Learning management system information is stored on the platform for users to simply log in with credentials to access. A hosted learning management system means that the company you chose for your LMS software will host the LMS on their servers. Today, most LMSs are web-based, but the best ones tend to be licenced as well, i.e., you don’t have to pay to house your own server space or the team to maintain it, the software is always being improved for its users, and there’s a customer experience team ready to answer any questions.

SCORM learning management systems

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Reference Model. When LMSs were created, content needed a format that would comply with the LMS, thus, SCORM came into existence. Now that LMSs have been modernised and are always improving with progressing technology, SCORM isn’t really necessary anymore. Companies that still use SCORM LMS software likely don’t know of a better learning management system or feel that they’re in too deep to change. The use of a SCORM LMS today is likely by older companies that haven’t made the switch to a more modern LMS.

A SCORM-compliant LMS has three parts: the content, the SCORM, and the LMS. Content created outside the LMS is to be SCORM-compliant so that the LMS can read it. SCORM is a technical standard that helps developers write the code so that content and LMS become cohesive.

Open-source learning management systems

An open-source LMS can be web-based and SCORM-compliant and even free. However, open-source means that the framework of the software is given to you, a lot of the time for free, but then you have to obtain and manage the assets to support it. That is, you’d have to host it yourself and hire a team of developers to customise, maintain, and develop the LMS. This becomes costly, and if you’re part of a growing business, there’s a likelihood that you don’t have time to take on the implementation of a large system like this.

With an open-source training software, you’re likely to run into some usability issues. Many functions feel restrictive and there’s a common lack of features compared to supported, web-based software. Essentially, you’re creating the online course software. Open source LMSs are best to customise and implement with time on your side. You don’t want your learners to feel led through something clunky. They won’t take the process seriously, and in turn, they won’t learn.

In a learning management system, an open-source framework is not the best choice when immediacy is a deciding factor. In turn, if it’s a free open source LMS, you could end up spending quite a lot of money as your business grows. Altering the software and hiring the team to maintain and handle customer support will easily put you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What a free LMS can’t do that others can

Some learning management system software is offered for free — but free doesn’t come without caveats. A free LMS is easy to find, but if you’re needing a platform for distributing learning to many people, it isn’t the most efficient choice. A free learning management system has limitations in features and functionality. Even the best free LMS comes with drawbacks. Many are offered as open source, meaning the bare bones of the programme are provided, but the development and maintenance of the software is left to the user. Some offer professional help, but that comes with a price.

“Free LMS software” is a loaded phrase. It works if, say, if you only have a few training resources to post and only a few people to train. But, if your company is planning to grow, you’re going to need a lot of space to store more learning materials and an interface with simple usability. And you can start out with free learning management system software, but it takes foresight to customise, grow, and maintain it. You would have to have a team of developers and programmers to fix any errors, purchased server space to house a myriad of materials — all of this on top of the actual employees that have to manage the training process itself. It takes months to grow a free LMS to run well enough for bulk onboarding.

A free course management system works in the education industry for a small classroom situation, but in corporate learning where ROI is a prominent consideration, free eLearning tends to not pan out well.

SaaS has quickly become more ideal for corporate training purposes. Instead of a software company creating a system software behind a curtain, revealing it, then selling it — with new versions year after year — a SaaS is a company in itself. Its software is constantly accessible, and any updates are readily available as soon as they’re launched. The service that comes along with the software is definitely an important part. With computer-based software programmes, there isn’t someone at the ready to help you tackle any problems. You have to figure it out yourself or hire a third party IT specialist to problem solve for you. A SaaS is not only constantly developing its product and offering resources to help clients, but they generally tend to have a service team at the ready to directly communicate with specific problems or questions a client may have.

Software-as-a-Service is more cost effective in comparison to taking on a free LMS or a computer-based one. There’s no team to hire to customise and develop the product, and there’s significantly fewer people required to manage it. A company doesn’t have to pay the salaries of a team dedicated to the LMS, but instead pays a significantly less fee to have the software maintained for them.

Learning management system comparisons

The most pertinent part of choosing the best LMS system for your company is knowing exactly what features and functions you need from an LMS. Learning management systems, open-source, SCORM-compliant, or licenced, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what’s best for your business. Sit down with some of your team members and learners, and write out the learning management system features and functionality you want from an LMS software.

By searching for or creating your own comparison of learning management system companies, you can gather information to make the best decision. LMS reviews that compare learning management systems can be found online at sites like G2Crowd and Software Advice. The sole purpose of these sites is to supply sufficient information about software for the benefit of customer discovery.

When looking at these sites, be able to differentiate between the best learning management systems and a popular LMS. Hopefully, the two can be one, but sometimes that’s not the case. If you’re looking for quick, efficient eLearning on an admin and learner-friendly platform, you’re likely to go with a licenced learning software-as-a-service. If you don’t have a small team and simply need to host a few courses, a free learning management system might be right for you. Keep in mind that as you grow, a free LMS will require money and resources to build upon.

Learning management system software reviews display features, functions, testimonials, ratings, and even some demos for people searching for software. Use your needs list to check off boxes of the LMSs you find fitting. Likely, you’re going to discover more features and functionality than you need from any software. In that case, think about the growth in your company and add to the list the features and functions you’ll need in the future. Then, use the testimonials to search for similar situations. Some testimonials provide insight on things to come and go within the development of software.

When searching for reviews, note if the software has a demo. With a demo, you can try the software out for yourself. This is a great option if you’re at a standstill between two or three choices. No one learns anything quite better than experiencing it first-hand. When it comes to learning within a business, having a great product from the administrative and learner end will prove its worth in efficiency.

Lastly, contact the companies with the software choice you think you’ve decided on. This may be the last step for you in searching, but this all depends on communication. For example, if the sales rep you’re in contact with doesn’t manage your time well or acutely answers your questions, it may feel a bit foreboding to your service from that company in the future. We believe that communication is key. From the first contact with a sales representative to sticking by a client’s side when technical trouble arrives, we make sure our service is just like our eLearning software: seamless.

Deliver online learning with Seismic

Seismic’s learning software is not a traditional learning content management system. We’ve taken the traditional eLearning paradigm and shifted it. We help clients understand the importance of learning and how efficiently it can be done with the right tools. If you’re ready to get started, get a demo.

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What is call centre training software?

Call centre training software helps companies create, manage and deliver training to agents and other customer-facing employees so they are prepared to provide exceptional customer care. This software enables trainers to create call centre training courses that agents can access right from their desks. These online lessons focus on:

• Company-specific knowledge
• Products and services
• Technical information
• Policies and processes to follow
• Customer service skills

The evolution of call centres and the impact on training

Customer service has quickly become a competitive advantage and proven driver of long-term growth for organisations. However, the rapid pace of business, paired with evolving customer preferences, means that companies need to enable agents to deliver outstanding service time and time again. Let’s take a look at how the call centre industry is evolving and how it impacts agent training.

New service channels and customer preferences

More customers are turning to self-service channels for simple, transactional interactions like checking an account balance or the status of an order. When it’s time for a customer to reach out to an agent, it’s likely because they can’t find the answer or solution through self-service. Therefore, these interactions tend to be more complex, unique and unpredictable.

To adapt to new service channels and customer needs, call centres need to provide agents with training opportunities that prepare them to handle and solve detailed interactions. Additionally, agents need to be equipped with a wide range of customer service skills to handle interactions across multiple support channels like chat, email and phone.

Dispersed workforce

More call centres have also embraced a remote or hybrid work model in the post-pandemic world. In fact, a 2021 study showed that more than 87% of agents work from home compared to only 19% in 2019. Studies also predict that anywhere from 60–80% of agents will continue working from home long-term.

The days of relying on in-person, instructor-led training sessions are a thing of the past. Now, leaders need to find a scalable and efficient way to provide training programmes for call centre employees who are located in different cities, states and countries.

Agent turnover and decreased engagement

On average, call centres experienced an average attrition rate of 42% in 2021. In addition to this retention challenge, 31% of agents said they are disengaged with their role and actively looking for new jobs. Of those surveyed, the lack of employee training and development opportunities were the top reasons why call centre agents are disengaged and looking for new roles.

If call centres want to improve agent retention and engagement, they need to give agents access to the ongoing training they want. This will not only provide crucial upskilling, but also provide agents with a clear career growth path.

The benefits of using online tools for call centre training

While industry change is unavoidable, the good news is that call centre agent training software can help companies overcome these challenges and ensure customer satisfaction. Unlike other training methods, call centre training software is a great way to automate the training process, provide ongoing learning opportunities and track training progress. Take a look at this quick comparison between traditional training and call centre training software:

Essential call centre training software features

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of call centre training software, it’s important to note that not all call centre training software is created equally. While some companies may be tempted to turn to an old-school learning management system, the best call centre training software is purpose-built for frontline agents and includes the following features.

1. User friendliness: Call centre training software should be easy to use for training leaders and users. Look for a simple interface that allows you to drag and drop text, videos, images and documents into your call centre’s training courses. Then, make sure it’s intuitive for agents to access and use.
2. On-demand access: Employees forget 90% of what they learn within one week, so be sure your tool provides agents with on-demand access to training content. This will allow them to revisit training during customer interactions and ensure they are providing accurate information.
3. Blended learning: Sometimes your organisation will need to rely on in-person or virtual training sessions that are led by an instructor. Call centre training software can also support these training sessions and provide agents with supplemental training materials.
4. Assessments and quizzes: It’s not enough for agents to just complete the call centre training courses assigned to them. Training leaders need to ensure that agents understand the material and can correctly apply that knowledge to their roles.
5. Role playing and practice scenarios: As we mentioned earlier, customer interactions are becoming more complex and taking place across a number of support channels. Find a tool that gives agents the chance to walk through common customer scenarios and practice crucial customer service skills needed for email, chat and video before they actually interact with customers.
6. Tracking and reporting: Call centre training software also keeps track of training completion, satisfaction, development progress and learner feedback so that training leaders can measure the impact of training.
7. Data-driven coaching and feedback: Leaders also need to be able to identify skill gaps among agents and provide ongoing coaching to improve performance.
8. Learning paths: No two agents will be exactly the same when it comes to their skill set and performance. With call centre training software, leaders can create custom learning paths to address specific call centre skills training and areas of improvement for each agent.
9. Call centre certification programmes: Certifications are great for call centres that have tiered support agents who require expertise in a certain area. So find a tool that enables you to create certifications that provide agents with the development opportunities they want.
10. Integrates with the tech stack: Agents have to jump from tool to tool on a daily basis. Look for a tool that seamlessly integrates with the software they already know how to use to create a simplified learning experience.

Call centre training best practices

Call centres that leverage online training software have a great opportunity to create an engaging, scalable and effective training programme for their agents. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when it comes to creating and delivering your organisation’s call centre training programme.

Analyse training needs

First and foremost, it’s important to evaluate your team’s current training efforts and identify needs. Providing an excellent assessment requires leaders to listen to agents, review performance metrics and consider other factors that are impacting the industry. This will help you identify what is working and what the greatest training needs are.

Develop clear goals and objectives

Once you identify your team’s training needs, you need to create a plan for success. By creating a thoughtful and deliberate process, leaders can easily set goals for your training efforts. Ideally, your call centre training programme will improve agent knowledge that will positively impact customer satisfaction scores, first call resolution rates and result in fewer customer escalations.

Embrace onboarding and continuous learning

The biggest mistake a call centre can make is focusing on new agent training during the first week or 30 days on the job. A successful call centre training programme delivers both crucial onboarding and ongoing training opportunities to both new and existing agents over time. Agents need refresher training to keep their service skills sharp and to learn about important business changes and updates.

Focus on essential call centre skills training

All too often, call centres only focus on industry-specific training. Or, they may just provide basic-level training that ensures agents know how to use specific software. While these are important call centre training topics for every organisation, agents also need to receive training and coaching on customer service skills like empathy, effective communication and active listening.

Measure training progress

Deliver call centre training online with Seismic
In the end, call centre training is about delivering results, which means it isn’t a “set it and forget it” item on your to-do list. The best call centre leaders track training progress over time to ensure agents are best equipped to succeed in their roles.

Deliver call centre training online with Seismic

World-class call centre teams deliver exceptional customer care time and time again. And with our call centre training software, teams can onboard new agents quickly, deliver ongoing learning and coaching and track training progress against business goals. Read how one customer earns an average CSAT score of 90% by delivering call centre training online with Seismic. Or, get a demo and we’ll show you how to take your call centre training programme to the next level.

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Customer service training

As customer needs and preferences continue to evolve, customer service training has become even more important. And while many customer service teams provide basic training by following the traditional training playbook, it isn’t enough. While free customer service training materials are a great place to start, these programmes typically feature standard, antiquated information from free customer service materials they found years ago. The best customer service training programmes go beyond the basics to create world-class customer service enablement. This means that reps and agents receive continuous training that focuses on both technical knowledge and customer service skills.

Customer service tips

In addition to customer service training, retail customer service tips and customer service tips for staff are very helpful when enabling teams for success. Because service reps and agents handle different types of interactions on a daily basis, they may find a customer service tip of the day helpful to their role. Leaders can also empower employees to share their own customer service tips and tricks with one another as a way to share best practices across the team.

Customer service coaching and feedback

Reps and agents also need effective coaching and feedback on their current performance and how they can improve in their role. For example, the growing popularity of self-service channels means that customers are turning to these channels for simple, transactional interactions. When it comes time for a customer to reach out to a rep, it’s likely because they didn’t get the help they needed via self-service. Therefore, the phone call tends to be more complex and unique. To adapt, leaders need to share customer service phone tips and coaching strategies that prepare employees to handle higher-effort or more stressful interactions. This strategy maximises performance across the entire workforce.

The Importance of Training in Customer Service

Explore the Guide

Resource to help enable your customer service team

Planning and building a training programme that enables customer service reps and agents doesn’t have to be difficult. That’s why we created a number of resources to help you create a phenomenal enablement programme.

Improve Customer Service in an Omnichannel World with our Ebook

For truly great customer service, leaders need to identify innovative customer service ideas as they expand their omnichannel strategy. Gone are the days when a customer picks up a phone to talk to a rep. Now, team members have to adapt to new channels and customer preferences. By continually asking how to improve customer service in the workplace, customer service enablement leaders will set their team up for success as they adapt to the continuously evolving service industry.

Our ebook, Enabling Customer Service Success in an Omnichannel World, features the advice and knowledge of six customer service experts that any support team can benefit from. This guide will show you how to transform training, equip reps and agents excellently, and measure what matters when it comes to customer service.

Free Customer Service Training Manual

Consistent and thorough customer service training is essential—even when customers already seem satisfied. That’s why internal customer service training must be standardised to avoid serious discrepancies that result in customer churn. Without a single training plan in place, managers and co-workers may train each staff member to use different techniques. This can lead to conflict or dissatisfaction when every employee treats customers differently. Our Customer Service Training Manual Template can help your organisation provide consistent training to employees, identify important training topics, and ensure customers are created equally.

Customer Service Training Guide

With a rapidly changing industry and ever-increasing customer expectations, it’s time to rethink customer service training. If companies want to figure out how to improve customer service in the workplace—and impact their bottom line—they need to build, deliver, and measure customer service enablement and training efforts like never before. That’s why we worked with numerous customer service experts, thought-leaders, and practitioners to explain why customer service training programmes are the foundation of good customer service. Our customer service training guide also includes customer service tips and tricks, best practices, free customer service training activities, and other helpful resources so teams can learn, practise, and grow.

The emerging role of a customer service enablement manager

As you can see there’s a lot that goes into customer service enablement. To make this effort as successful as possible, it may be helpful to hire or designate an enablement manager. A customer service enablement manager provides reps and agents with the training, content, processes, and tools they need to deliver great support. This includes working with different teams like quality assurance, marketing, and management to increase productivity and customer service levels. The role includes a wide range of different responsibilities and priorities like those we’ve listed above.  Since CS enablement managers oversee and work on so many different functions and tasks, you may see similar or related job titles such as:

• Customer Service Manager
• Customer Service Training Manager
• Director/Head of Service Enablement
• Enablement Programme Manager

Enable your customer service team

If you’re ready to enable your customer service team, we’re here to help. Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly) is training and coaching software that frontline support teams use to decrease onboarding time for new agents, practise essential skills, and deliver coaching at scale. Get a demo to learn more.

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Enter new employee onboarding software. This form of employee training software makes it easy to build, deliver, and track your new employee onboarding efforts. Not only is it easy for employers to use, but it also creates a seamless learning experience for your new hires. By incorporating an online training system into your onboarding strategy, it’ll be easy to create best in class onboarding programmes. Let’s learn more.

The benefits of employee onboarding software

Save time by consolidating to one platform

Most small to mid-size businesses use a combination of HR Cloud software combined with Survey Monkey and emails to build, deliver, and train. You and your learners deserve something better. With Seismic Learning’s (formerly Lessonly by Seismic) onboarding solution, you can easily build your programme, share lessons and training tracks, and even measure the results, all within one user-friendly platform.

Create automatic workflows

Online training systems can also streamline the onboarding process by automating tasks over a certain period of time. An automated onboarding system helps streamline paperwork. In many cases, the new hire can complete their documents at home. This gives the company more time to concentrate on the employee, focusing on the tasks related to their job. Training modules can also be assigned ahead of time, and the system can track which ones are complete, which ones are not, and where the employee has deficiencies. This creates a stress-free experience for everyone. This means that managers and trainers don’t have to manually push out training content or schedule training session after training session. This creates an effective communication process between leaders and new hires while assuring managers that everyone is hitting necessary benchmarks and predetermined milestones throughout onboarding.

Know who learns what, when, and how well

The crown jewel of our training programme is it’s easy to automate onboarding and tracking. By default, you gain insight into who knows what they need to and who isn’t quite getting it. We believe accountability is just the beginning of measuring learning. Our most successful customers use Seismic Learning to highlight problem areas and even reward over-achievers.

Drive performance and productivity

Companies that deliver a great onboarding experience are also more likely to see an increase in employee retention, performance, and even productivity. In fact, companies that automate onboarding tasks with new employee onboarding software have a 16% higher retention rate of new hires. If that doesn’t show the benefits of onboarding software, then consider the fact that 77% of new hires who hit their performance goals had a formal employee onboarding experience.

Employee onboarding and development

Just as a first impression is critical for interpersonal relationship assumptions, employee orientation and any ongoing integration efforts, are some of the most essential elements of long-term happiness in a career. While most companies have a new employee onboarding process, most employees would say the experience they had could have been better. When onboarding new employees, keep in mind that your new hires are most likely comparing the way you are onboarding employees to the way they have been onboarded in the past. That’s why employee onboarding software is a great way to not only develop employees efficiently but also to stand apart in a positive way from an employee’s previous onboarding experiences. Then, once a new hire has been onboarded, it’s critical to keep the employee development going with ongoing training and education opportunities to keep the employee engaged. Seismic Learning’s software can also help you track the results of ongoing training efforts.

What does the onboarding process look like?

The onboarding process for new hires is crucial to get right and in spite of common practice, includes much more than the first day of work. In fact, best in class onboarding programmes last more than just a few weeks. We’ve seen some great onboarding programmes create 30,60, and even 90 day checkpoints for new hires after the initial onboarding process ends. Similarly to the group dynamic process flow, a good onboarding programme will be aware of and include the phases of forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Forming

The forming stage is typically referred to as orientation and will normally include only the first day of work. This is the part of the onboarding process where an employee is typically spoon fed general company knowledge, filling out new employee forms, and very little job-specific training is happening.

Storming

The storming phase of the employee onboarding process will usually include the first week of work. This is when the new hire gets to learn the details of their specific role, get to know the other members of the team better, learn the lay of the land in the office, and start to understand where they can provide value.

Norming

The norming phase in a new hire process will last from the second week until around the sixth week of employment. This is where an employee starts to become comfortable with their new surroundings and begins to move beyond the barriers of learning the basics of the company. This phase should not be ignored by onboarding programmes as it is critical to transition from this phase to the next.

Performing

The performing stage of the onboarding process is typically marked by the seventh week of employment until the individual exits the company. This is the goal of the new hire process as it is when the employee begins to provide true added value to the team and earn their paycheck.

New employee orientation

Referenced in the onboarding process flow chart above as the norming phase, new employee orientation is the first of four stages in proper new hire onboarding programming. New hire orientation is generally understood to be the first part of a new employee’s experience with their new job. It is considered new employee orientation best practices to be as thorough as possible in the beginning of a new employee orientation programme because that is the time when new hires are expecting to learn onboarding-type training materials. It is also common practice to introduce a new employee to the rest of the staff with an announcement email.

New employee orientation ideas

In addition to leveraging new employee onboarding software, here are some ideas to make your orientation programme for new employees more effective:

New employee orientation activities

Some of the best new hire orientation ideas are around the activities for the day. Be sure to make them fun and engaging, keeping in mind that most people are either excited or cynical about this type of experience. It’s best to feed on the excitement of those interested and make it engaging enough that even the cynics will at least smile a few times during the day.

New hire survey

A new hire survey can reveal a lot about the individuals going through the onboarding process and can reveal quite a bit about the process itself as well. We recommend conducting one before orientation and one after. Then, you can compare the results and understand how well a new hire has engaged throughout the process. Be sure to include some questions that are completely open-ended so that you can learn fresh ideas from your new team members.

New hire orientation presentation

Creating an orientation presentation obviously makes the onboarding process more efficient, but make sure it’s not boring. We find one of the best ways to relieve the tension and boredom of a typical onboarding presentation is to use a lot of funny and interesting animated GIFs rather than relying on text to convey information.

Different forms of training and development

As a part of the onboarding process, it is important to keep in mind the new employee’s experience with the company after their first day and first week. After planning the initial phases of the orientation process are complete, be sure to plan for the ongoing training/development that should take place to push a new hire to the performing phase. Although this is often found in T&D departments of larger companies, we’ve found that many companies now expect ongoing training and development to be completed by the functional area where the employee works.

Human resources training

For the HR department, there are typically a number of company-wide human resource training materials that need to be distributed to all incoming employees regardless of their position. Human resource training and development will usually include information around company culture, corporate values, and other ways to keep the company consistently drumming to the same beat. It may also include training and development in human resource management if the new employee will be working with the HR team.

Training and development of employees

Training new employees can be difficult, but just like most things, new hire training gets easier over time, especially if you implement a new employee training plan. A training plan will help others know how to train new employees better and will help the training and development of employees add to your culture to retain more talent. Remember, the more you plan and prepare for training and developing employees, the better equipped they will be to be successful in their roles and lead to growth for the entire company.

Staff training and development

Oftentimes, training for individual employees is just simply not efficient, so you may resort to staff development and training, where your entire company or a specific team will be trained. This type of staff training and development is very common, especially when you are paying for an expert to come and train your team. To help organise staff and team training like this, we have implemented the Group feature in Seismic Learning, so that you can assign training materials to your entire company or a team, rather than just an individual.

Professional development training

There are many occupations where professional development training is a requirement, such as education, real estate, and other licenced positions. It is important to discuss how the professional development process will be handled with your team. Who will be paying for the ongoing development? Will you provide resources that help prepare for exams? Will you provide reminders for each new employee as they reach their requirements? Will you provide leadership development training? Make sure these expectations are set before, during, and after the onboarding process.

Get started with our employee onboarding software

If you’re ready to roll out the red carpet and welcome your new hires in a special way, take a look at our online training software. Not only can we help you create an onboarding programme that engages and excites your new hires, but we can also help you deliver ongoing training that will help everyone grow in their careers. Get a demo to learn more.

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